


The Best Years Of Your Life

by BirchBow (chaoticTenebrism)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blackmail, Caliborn is a Massive Asshole and Nobody Should Be Surprised, Death Threats, Drug Use, Family Fluff, Hey Look a Makara Family That Actually Likes Each Other, Hospitalization, Humanstuck, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Rape/Non-con Elements, Slurs, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Torture Threat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-02-05 05:58:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1807909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticTenebrism/pseuds/BirchBow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat doesn't notice for months--and by the time he does, the damage is done.  The only thing left to do is put together the places his best friend is broken, in any way he can.  </p><p>Kink Meme Prompt: Highschool AU - Karkat notices the silent cries for help in his best friend's art, and discovers that Caliborn English's bullying goes way beyond physical violence.  Focus on aftermath and emotional effects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Kink Meme Prompt:
> 
> "Gamzee is your normal guy, head of the art club, has a funny liking for clowns, and acts stoned despite being pretty bright. You know the nerdy-guy-in-the-corner type. That is until Caliborn, one of the school jocks takes an interest in him. At first it seems as if [Cal] has increased the typical bullying that goes on between the two, but soon things start to escalate. Gamzee soon starts to beg for help through his drawings, the first to notice is his family but they can do little to help since he won't tell them what they need to know. Soon Karkat his only best friend takes notice as well. Digging deeper his family and Karkat discover the abuse.  
> The ending can be up to you, but no suicide please.
> 
> Challenge:  
> 1.Take this promt and write a recovery fic. I'm more interested in the psychological side of such things such as how the person feels, and how this affects their behavior afterwards.  
> 2\. Don't actually have Caliborn rape him."

Karkat Vantas’s best friend is an idiot. 

As evidenced partly by the way he’s almost eighteen but still in the same grade as Karkat, even though Karkat is three years younger.  As evidenced by his big stupid grin when any sane person would be pissed off every waking second they have to be locked up in this festering boil on the back of the corrupt and useless public education system.  As evidenced by the massive stack of art supplies and books and notebooks tottering around in his arms that he scooped up without even thinking about how hard it was going to be to carry those down the hallway without dropping them all over the place.

Granted he hasn’t dropped anything yet.  It’s amazing how he can go from slamming into windows and doorframes to doing double backflips and balancing massive stacks of things while in motion. 

Karkat has basically given up on understanding Gamzee Makara.  By this point it’s pretty clear it’s a futile exercise.  He’s weird this year, anyway—even harder to understand than normal.  Kind of jumpy.  Looks kind of sick and keeps falling asleep in class.  Like, even more than usual. But still the same kind of weird incomprehensible, loveable idiot he’s always been.

The hallway is mostly empty anyway—eighth period ended ten minutes ago.  The only reason Karkat’s still here is because Gamzee’s an idiot and he wants to be talking to someone at literally all fucking times.  He gets lonely after about thirty seconds without attention.  So here they are, walking down to the art room past the few people unlucky enough to have extracurriculars or extra business to keep them in this hellhole institution more than thirty seconds past the last bell.

…like…that pack of assholes coming in the other direction, laughing way too loud and shoving people out of their way—

“Shit,” says Karkat, and Gamzee makes a startled noise as he’s tugged sharply over to one side of the hallway, just barely managing to keep his tottering stack of books and papers from overbalancing. 

It’s not that the entire football team is full of assholes, but the ones who are assholes have either corrupted or out-shouted the ones who are decent, and seeing them walk towards you like that is bad news.  Especially when you’re Karkat Vantas.  The Vantas family’s got no money and Karkat is already in trouble for fights this year and everybody knows he can’t afford another one.  And then there’s Gamzee, who’s tall and skinny and unpopular in that weird, popular way where everyone knows he’s not cool but everyone loves to talk to him anyway.  Cal and the team hate him, even more than they hate Karkat.

And when you say ‘Cal and the team’, no matter who you are or what you’re talking about, it’s generally accepted throughout the school that you mostly just mean Cal.

They get most of the way past Karkat and Gamzee, still shouting and laughing and not even acknowledging that they exist—which is how Karkat likes them, seriously—when someone shoves past him hard and slams him into a locker.  Karkat brings up an arm fast and hard to block any other hits that might be coming his way, but nobody tries to hit him again and he looks up just in time to see Caliborn English step right up into Gamzee’s personal space and lean in real close. 

“Hey, Makara,” says Cal, loud and rough, and then hisses something in his ear too softly to hear.

Gamzee doesn’t just jump, he jumps so badly he drops everything in his arms all over the hallway.  It’s hard to see the color under the darkness of his skin, but his eyes go wide and his face seems ashen all of a sudden.  He opens his mouth to say something, but Cal is already shoving away and striding off down the hallway, trailing his buddies behind him.  Gamzee stares after him for a long, long moment, and his expression is really scary, somehow, the open horror sits very wrongly on his friendly face. 

“…Gamzee?" Karkat gives his shoulder a little shake--Gamzee doesn't react, just stays perfectly still, staring. He doesn't even seem to be breathing. "-- _Gamzee!_ What the fuck?”

He jumps again and stares at the mess on the ground like he’s never seen the stuff before.  He doesn’t answer, just sinks down to his knees and starts scooping up papers.  His hands are shaking.

“What did he say?”

He shakes his head and moves faster.  Karkat stares, honestly fucking alarmed now, and Gamzee snatches his sketchbook off the ground, piles it on top of his other things and takes off like the hounds of hell are on his heels, leaving Karkat behind in the empty hallway.

Karkat stares after him for a second, confused and shocked, and he’s about to follow and  _make_ Gamzee tell him what’s up when something white and fluttering catches his eye. 

There’s a piece of paper still on the ground; it’s half-crushed under a locker, no wonder Gamzee didn’t see it when he was picking up.  Karkat bends down, tugs it out from under the locker.

It’s just a piece of notebook paper, covered in scrawly handwriting and messy notes.  And in the corner, there’s one simple little drawing in that distinctive smeared and scribbled style that always ends up hung on the wall outside the art room and shown off in school papers.  It’s definitely Gamzee’s art. 

But Karkat has seen his art, and this…is strange.  Usually it’s clowns and rainbows and these surreal, weird-as-fuck spinning, whirling pictures that feel like a drug trip to look at—but everyone is smiling so wide and happy it’s hard not to want to climb into the picture anyway.

This picture is simple and small, squeezed into the corner of the paper.  It’s a hunched little figure drawn with harsh, deep-scratched lines, faceless and skeletally thin.  It’s enclosed in a giant pair of battered, clawed hands, peering out through the fingers like a prisoner looking through the bars of a cell. 

He’s not really sure why—but he folds the paper up and puts it in his pocket.  His fingers bump his phone as he pulls them out, and on an afterthought he takes his phone out and taps out ‘ _WHAT THE FUCK GAMZEE, ARE YOU OKAY?_ ’

All-caps for emphasis, like everything else Karkat Vantas ever finds important enough to text about. 

Then he puts his phone away and walks home.  But something about the look on Gamzee’s face before he ran away nags at him all afternoon, and he doesn’t even yell at Kankri when he sees the doodles Gamzee did on Karkat’s arms during study hall and lectures him about ink poisoning.  Karkat’s dad looks at him strange, but he doesn’t need to know any of this shit—Karkat just waves him off and goes to bed, thinking about that strange ashy paleness in Gamzee’s brown cheeks and the tight, scared line of his mouth.

Gamzee doesn’t answer the text, and Karkat doesn’t sleep well that night.

\--

The next day everything is so normal Karkat almost manages to convince himself that what happened yesterday was a weird, shitty dream.  Gamzee is waiting when he gets there for homeroom, and when Karkat yells at him to check his phone (dead yesterday, apparently—he never remembers to keep it charged, the massive absentminded tool) and sees the message, he looks really touched and gives Karkat a great big hug right there in the middle of the classroom.  Karkat slaps and yells at him, but nobody is even paying attention.  They’re used to Gamzee and his bizarrely touchy-feely affection.   

Then after first period both of them peel off down the arts hallway for the art class which Gamzee basically forced Karkat to take with him and Karkat messes around with markers for the entire period while Gamzee makes sweeping works of art across huge pieces of paper and smears ink and charcoal across his face and hands.  Karkat scrubs at his face with paper towels the whole way out of class and doesn’t even care how much he’s acting like a fussy mom. 

School happens.  Lunch is shit. 

So basically, same old, same old.

And then they hit eighth period gym, and this time Karkat sees it.

There’s usually some group of jocks in there, using it during eighth period for a basketball game or hanging out and pretending they’re not smoking out the back door—and just like every time, there’s Cal’s hulking, tattooed figure slumped by the door, making violent gestures, laughing with his friends.  His laugh is ugly and loud and it carries right across the room, and this time instead of focusing on doing what the teacher tells him and keeping his eyes on his feet until the period is over, Karkat watches Gamzee wince every time Cal’s laugh is loud enough to echo through the gym.  Watches him cut his laps short, avoiding the corner where Cal and his buddies are smoking out the door.  The way he seems to shrink when he does have to get close, how weird and tense and worried he looks until he’s clear of them.

And then a few minutes before the period ends, it happens again; as Gamzee goes past, Cal strides out in two long steps and grabs him hard by the arm, spinning him around so they’re face to face.  Gamzee is taller, not as skinny as he looks when he’s dressed in his huge, baggy clothes, but Cal’s hands can go almost all the way around his bicep, and he’s got no chance of pulling away.  Cal leans in, way too close—Gamzee hunches away, but Cal spits something sharp and vicious and he goes still.  His face looks strange and wrong without his smile.  His mouth is bent into a tight, unhappy frown. 

Cal leans in again, and Gamzee shudders as he mumbles something inches from one ear. 

The bell rings.  Gamzee immediately tries to tug away, but Cal holds on for another second, watching him try to pull free with this weird, satisfied smirk on his face.  Then he says something, too quiet for Karkat to hear over the relieved chatter of the other kids in the class, and he lets go.

Gamzee half-runs away from him for most of the gym, and then he slows down and stops, huddling in on himself a little, closing his eyes.  He…looks like he might be shaking.  It’s pretty weird and kind of disturbing, and Karkat slings his backpack up on his shoulder and jogs over to him.  He doesn’t seem to hear the footsteps coming closer, not even with the way they bounce off the walls of the gym and echo—at least, if he hears Karkat coming, he doesn’t look up.   Karkat stops a few feet from him, uncertain all of a sudden.  Glances past him…Cal is watching them, still smiling, eyes narrowed. 

For some reason, Karkat shudders.

“Gamzee?”

He jumps again, jerking upright and staring at Karkat like he just woke up from a nightmare to a cold splash of water. 

“Karkat,” he says, and he pulls up a smile.  It looks genuine—if Karkat wasn’t looking for it, he wouldn’t see the way Gamzee’s hands are shaking, ever so slightly.  “I. Sorry man, can’t walk home with you, I got—I got something I gotta do today.  See you tomorrow.”

“I can wait around for—”

“No!”

Karkat jumps.  Gamzee is staring at him, eyes wide.  As Karkat stares at him, he seems to realize how loudly he just answered—he slumps a little.  His face is red. 

“…nah man,” he mumbles.  “Get home to your dad.  Can walk home without you, right, you’re always tellin’ me so.”

That’s true, fuck him, of course he listens enough to remember that  _now_  when it’s inconvenient.  Karkat turns once or twice as he’s leaving the gym, glancing back; Gamzee is staring down at his feet.  For a split second as Karkat walks out through the double doors and into the hallway beyond, he thinks he catches sight of Gamzee’s face at the corner of his eye, looking up, looking at  _him_ —but when he turns and fights his way back through the crowd of kids pushing through the doors, Gamzee is gone.

So is Cal.

\--

Nothing else weird happens for a couple of days.  Cal doesn’t do anything creepy—or at least, nothing creepier or grosser than normal—and Gamzee seems to go back to his normal, friendly, open self.  But he keeps drawing those small, cramped, scratchy drawings, and every time he darts over to the trash can at the end of class when he thinks Karkat’s not looking, Karkat retrieves more and more crumpled pieces of paper covered in suffering bodies and monster faces and snakes and chains and skulls.  And Gamzee smiles and smiles and doesn’t eat and  _smiles._

But he won’t  _talk_  about it, and when Karkat tries to ask he immediately tenses up and tries to find a way to get away as fast as he can, and it’s awkward for hours and he can take care of himself, right?  (Can he?  He can.  Of course he can.)  And Karkat bites his tongue and worries for two whole weeks before the second of the weirdest weird things happens.

It’s almost the end of the day, between seventh and eighth period, and Karkat is digging around in his disaster of a locker when he notices that something is wrong.  The noise of the hallway has changed subtly but distinctly, gotten quieter and more furtive and turned into hissing whispers.  People have started walking faster, jostling him as they go fast.  Karkat pulls his head out of his locker and glares around, and that’s when he notices the source of the noise and his heart jumps up into his mouth.

There’s a tall, shadowy figure coming down the hallway towards him, and the hallway gets quieter and more harried as it gets closer and closer, and Karkat can make out dark, mahogany skin, black jacket, black jeans, black dreadlocks, gleaming earrings and a…familiar…face…

Oh.

It’s obvious at a glance that Kurloz Makara is Gamzee’s brother.  He’s got the same rich, brown skin, arched, aquiline nose and dark, sharp eyes, although his dreads are way longer and tied up in a messy knot on the back of his head.  He apparently inherited the Makara trait of being unfairly fucking tall, and he stands head and shoulders above the kids around him, who are mostly really really intimidated freshmen who just want to get the hell out of his way.  He’s got big,  _big_  gold earrings too, which Gamzee isn’t allowed to have (because of his dad, he says, he’s not allowed till he’s older.  Just one of those Makara family rules that you absolutely don’t fucking question).  The sleeves of his black jacket are pushed up to his elbows; perfect, detailed tattoos of bones stand out in white ink against his skin, like scars. 

When he sees Karkat, his eyes widen minutely and then narrow.                           

“Hey,” says Karkat, a little bit cautiously.  “…Kurloz.”

Kurloz takes a few long strides closer, until he’s right up close.  Leans down.

“… _what’s wrong with my brother,_ ” he says, in a soft, sandy snarl.  His voice sounds like he hasn’t used it in weeks—and by his reputation, Karkat supposes he wouldn’t really be surprised if that was true.  He’s never heard Gamzee’s big brother talk, not even a single word, not even to Gamzee. 

“Uh,” says Karkat, and takes a step back.  Kurloz follows him, staying just a little too close, glowering.  “…I—why don’t you just ask him?”

“… _I asked_ ,” says Kurloz, soft as ever, but there’s a sort of tension to him that doesn’t bode well for Karkat’s continued well-being if he doesn’t produce answers, and in a hurry.  He’s probably spoken more in the past thirty seconds than he usually does in a year.  Talking, the rumor goes, puts Kurloz Makara in a foul mood.  “… _he won’t…_ tell _me._ ”

Now  _that_  is weird.  Karkat frowns at him, confused—Gamzee basically idolizes his badass big brother, they’re pretty fucking tight.  Even though Gamzee spends most of his free time staring into space and grinning about how great life is and Kurloz spends his free time doing god knows what (being a virtuoso cellist and making murals according to the few times he’s been in the newspaper—committing murder, is Karkat’s guess, especially going by the look in his eyes right now).  Gamzee  _would_  have told Kurloz.  He wouldn’t keep a secret from him, especially not something that’s obviously making him miserable.

“…I don’t know what’s up with him,” says Karkat slowly, and reaches into his backpack, to a folder full of skulls and snakes, blood and chains.  The bell rings for the start of eighth period, but— _fuck_  eighth period.  Some things are more important.  “…but.  I guess…I might have something that could help?”

\--

Kurloz’s expression doesn’t change as he looks through the drawings, but the more he flips from page to page of the papers Karkat has collected the colder the air seems to feel.  His fingers, which look so soft and thin and fucking  _delicate_  when he’s hanging around smoking and playing his cello and making giant graffiti pictures of the thousand faces of death or whatever it was he got suspended for the third time—clench so tight on the papers in his hand that his knuckles go white.

“…I don’t know what they mean,” says Karkat finally, just to break the godforsaken  _silence_  already—“…but he’s been doing them more and more.  Keeps shoving them in the trash when he thinks I’m not looking at him.”  A little child with a painted smile, crying in a cage made out of snakes.  A limp body hanging from shackles, like a gross mockery of a puppet hanging from strings.  Kurloz’s mouth is a very thin line.  “I mean, does any of this shit mean anything to you?”

Kurloz glares at him impassively for a few seconds—but then his eyes fall on the drawings again.  His breath catches, ever-so-slightly.

“… _dreams he’s had,_ ” he says, still in that raspy whisper.  “… _some of them.   Green snakes.  Red eyes.  Skulls._ ”

Generic macabre bullshit, but that doesn’t make it any less weird that all of a sudden they’re seeping into Gamzee’s every drawing.  Karkat scratches his head and then lets it  _thunk_  down onto the table and just groans into the (slightly sticky) surface.

“…I’m…don’t tell anyone, okay?”

Kurloz’s mouth twists up wryly at the corner.  He raises a sharp eyebrow.  Karkat colors. 

“…right,” he says.  “…I just…I’m worried as all hell, man.”

Kurloz sighs through his nose and nods minutely.  His fingers trace a picture of a face; it’s much more realistically rendered than Gamzee’s normal work, even moreso than the other pictures in the stack, although that’s really not saying much for its realism.  The face is skull-like, with massive fangs and a threatening grin and two slashes of bright red on its cheeks.  Karkat kind of skated over it when he picked the paper up—above it, there’s a drawing of a skinny body that looks far too much like a self portrait, being pulled in one direction by a noose around its neck while its heart tries to tear out of its chest to stay behind.  Compared to that, the portrait had hardly registered.  But Kurloz is just tapping his finger on the face in the corner, frowning.

“…what?”

“… _this face,_ ” says Kurloz, very quietly.  “… _never forget a face._ ”  He closes his eyes, thinking.  Karkat edges just slightly closer, to get a good look at the picture.  It…does look kind of familiar.

Kurloz slides a few thin fingers over the paper, covers up the jagged fangs, and it clicks like a light turning on.

“—Cal English,” blurts Karkat.  Kurloz’s eyebrows rise.  He nods once, and maybe he might even look a little bit impressed.  Karkat does his best not to swell up with pride.  “It’s Cal English, some asshole jock—”

“… _know his sister,_ ” mutters Kurloz distractedly.  “… _twins._ ”

That explains why the face looked familiar to Kurloz at least—Karkat didn’t even know Caliborn English had a twin sister.  He has to feel kind of bad for her almost; Cal’s hatred of everything female that won’t take its clothes off for him or suck his dick on demand is legendary.

“Cal has been pushing everyone around for years,” says Karkat finally.  “I mean, he went after Gamzee a few times, but I didn’t figure he picked on him much more than any other poor fucker he pushed into lockers—”

Kurloz’s mouth is a tight, angry line.  Karkat stops, clears his throat.

“... _any more,_ ” says Kurloz slowly, “… _this year._ ”

Karkat blinks.  Kurloz is still staring at the picture, tapping his fingers on one red-smeared cheek.

“…maybe a little bit?” 

Kurloz glances at him sharply.

“Not hurting him or anything.”  Karkat pulls out the first picture he picked up—remembers how Cal leaned in and hissed something in Gamzee’s ear, how he jumped and fumbled his papers.  “…just…acting kind of weird, actually.  He’s always a creepy douche-fuck, but he’s been following him to classes, grinning at him in the hallways, passing him notes.  It’s almost like he wants to make friends with him, except he’s still the nastiest unrepentant shitwad in the school to him, same as always.”

Kurloz nods slowly, but whatever he’s thinking about, he doesn’t see fit to share.  He gets up and pulls out his phone, tapping away at the keyboard.

A second later, Karkat’s phone buzzes.  He pulls it out; it’s a text from a number he doesn’t know.

 _ADD ME_ , he reads.   _And text back._

Karkat looks up at Kurloz; Kurloz nods.

“How the  _fuck_  did you get my number?”

Kurloz’s mouth twists up just slightly at one corner, almost a smile.  He doesn’t answer.  Karkat rolls his eyes and adds the contact, under CREEPY FUCKER MAKARA. 

 _WE’LL FIGURE OUT WHAT’S GOING ON_ , he texts back, and Kurloz nods sharply and taps something out.  Karkat tries really hard not to say anything about how they’re standing in front of each other and it’s moronic to text to each other.  The phone buzzes.

 _I’ll be around_ , reads the text.   _You’ll find where he goes.  YOU’LL TELL ME_.

“Yeah yeah,” Karkat growls.  “…no need to fucking shout.”

Kurloz raises one eyebrow again, pointedly.  Karkat looks down at his own capslock-heavy texts and doesn’t comment. 

“I’ll text you when I see something,” he says, grudgingly.  “But if you’re not there, I’m going without you.” 

Kurloz hesitates for a second, and then nods.  And that seems to be it.  He puts his phone away, reaches down inside the big hood of his jacket and pulls out a pair of shiny pitch-black headphones.  Slips them on and quirks up the corner of his mouth at Karkat.  And then he walks away.

\--

Two more weeks. 

If Cal goes after Gamzee during that time, Karkat doesn’t see it.  Gamzee doesn’t walk back with Karkat most days, but he’s been working on something with the art teacher, Karkat knows.  He’s working on things after school. 

Walking home alone is strange, but not strange enough that he needs to text Kurloz.  Nothing to panic about.

And then Cal shows up just as Karkat and Gamzee are headed out the door (finally fucking  _done_  for the day), grabs Gamzee by one arm and tugs him back. 

“Fuck off, Vantas,” he growls, and smiles a really fucking terrible smile.  “…we got some things to talk about.”

Karkat opens his mouth to argue.  Gamzee glances over at him, eyes wide, hesitates, and then shakes his head.

He looks like he might be trembling.  Karkat’s heartbeat redoubles. 

“…I’ll.  Wait over here,” he says, and he feels like a coward.  Cal sneers for a second, and then seems to let that one go--at least enough to shrug and look away, back to Gamzee.  He leans in closer and lets go of Gamzee’s arm, but he puts his hands on the wall on either side of him, caging him in, like a sick parody of the couples that make out in the hallways. He's still smiling, vicious, and Gamzee doesn't meet his eyes, just leans away from him and presses against the wall like he wishes he could melt away through it.  A few seconds of inaudible, mostly one-sided conversation; Cal stops talking, waits a second, and then repeats, “— _won’t you?_ ” loud enough to hear.  Gamzee nods, minutely.

“Good,” says Cal, and drops his arms back to his side.  “You better.”  He looks over at Karkat.  “Now,” he says.  “Go say goodbye to your _babysitter._ ”  He strides past Karkat, clapping him so heartily on the back he grunts in pain and jolts forward.  Gamzee is standing where he was left, staring blankly off into space, apparently deep in thought—he jumps when Karkat puts a hand on his shoulder. 

“Oh,” he says, just a little bit shaky.  “Hey.”

“Hey,” says Karkat suspiciously, and Gamzee nods and rubs the heels of his hands into his shadowed eyes.  A curtain of dreadlocks blocks his face from view for a second; Karkat’s eyes catch on the beads wrapped around one of them, the stupid symbols that Gamzee made after interrogating Karkat about his zodiac sign and giving absolutely no fucking explanation whatsoever.  He’d made Karkat help with it.  (He’d noticed Karkat watching him string the beads together and offered to let him help and taught him how and just laughed when he messed up hours of work by pulling a thread the wrong way.) 

“…can’t walk back with you again,” says Gamzee, and he sounds very, very reluctant.  It used to be he would smile, pretend at least that he was happy even when his art said anything but.  But there’s a sort of growing tension in his eyes, a desperation.  The shadows under his eyes are growing deeper and deeper.  “Busy, bro.”

“Right,” says Karkat, and fakes a shitty grin.  “Art project, right? Have fun, dude.  Make us all fuckin’ famous.”

It’s sickeningly terrible the way Gamzee tries to smile back.  “Yeah,” he says, and holds up a fist, bumping their knuckles together.  “See you tomorrow, my main motherfucker.”

Karkat walks the opposite direction until he hears Gamzee walking away, and then he turns and runs.  


	2. Chapter 2

Gamzee trudges through the building, obviously consumed with his own thoughts, and doesn’t notice Karkat tailing him inconspicuously from less than twenty feet away. Karkat follows him through the freshman hallway, past the art room where Gamzee’s supposedly spending his time, and out into the windy gray outside. There aren’t many people left around to notice Karkat—no need to sneak around or anything—and Karkat is starkly reminded, all of a sudden, of the first time he noticed something was strange, that day he found the first drawing. Fuck, what if there had been others before that? What if Gamzee’s been drawing this shit for ages, hoping someone will notice and force him to talk about what he doesn’t think he—

Karkat starts to turn the corner, and then jerks back so hard he almost slams his head against the wall. Cal and his group are standing less than ten feet away. Gamzee walks slowly off towards them; Karkat just barely peers around the corner as Cal turns and grins.

“Well well,” he says, like some fucking cartoon villain, and the rest of what he says is too quiet and rough to hear. Karkat pulls out his phone and taps on the contact  _CREEPY FUCKER MAKARA_.

 _BEHIND THE SCHOOL_ , he types out.  _CAL+THE TEAM. NOT DOING ANYTHING, BUT GZ’S HERE TOO._

He waits for a a few minutes, staring at his phone, heart pounding. No return text.

He should wait for Kurloz to show up, but he just found them and Gamzee is  _right there._  There might not ever be a better time than this to figure out what the fuck is going on.

The weird thing is, he notices when he cautiously edges forward to look around the corner again, there doesn’t seem to  _be_  anything going on. Gamzee’s not doing anything—he’s just standing by the wall, head bowed, staring at his feet. None of them look at him or acknowledge him; he’s just there. But there’s a sort of fearful tension to his shoulders and the arch of his bent neck, and every time Cal laughs too loud or moves sharply Gamzee’s head jerks up a little, his eyes flick to Cal’s face.

Cal seems to be complaining about his coach—something about drug screenings. Everyone knows Cal is on  _something_ , maybe a couple of somethings, and the subject is obviously pissing him off.

“—out of fucking smokes,” he finishes abruptly, and stands up. Gamzee makes a shocked noise and staggers a little as Cal grabs a handful of his hoodie and tugs on it dismissively. (Karkat was with him when he bought those stupid cheap fabric pens with his own money and painstakingly drew those painted spirals, the violet sign on his back that he told Karkat all about,  _Capricorn._  Cal twists it up like it doesn’t even matter.) “—come on, you’ve always got some. Let’s go take. A smoke break.”

Gamzee follows him silently, and he still doesn’t look up from the ground in front of him. Karkat glances at his phone—no texts, no  _time_  to wait—and then ducks forward, keeping out of sight of Cal’s group of buddies, and follows them.

The school is empty, most of the doors are locked, but Cal goes to the door by the gym, glances right and left and then draws back a big, booted foot and smashes the door with one foot. The faulty lock gives out. The door opens.

“Come on,” he says, and waits for Gamzee to go in first, watching him the whole way. Shoves him hard between the shoulderblades as he goes past, just to make him stumble.

Karkat ducks forward as soon as Cal goes in, and manages to just catch the door before it can quite close. When he peers in through the crack, the gym is empty—but he can still hear Cal talking, saying something about cigarettes and laughing his loud, barking laugh. Karkat darts in and lets the door close really, really quietly behind him.

There’s only one other place they could be, and that’s the equipment room, right off to the right of the door, full of rolling carts of basketballs and traffic cones and all the other detritus of a school gym. Karkat takes a few deep breaths, checks his phone—nothing—and then edges forward, following the sound of Cal’s hoarse growl. The door to the equipment room is open.

Karkat eases forward and ducks down, staring unseen through the mesh of a half-empty cart of basketballs, and he sees Cal stop and lean against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. There’s no way he’s really going to smoke in here, there’s no windows and—Karkat glances up at the corner of the ceiling—yup, there’s a smoke alarm too. Cal’s not the brightest bulb in the drawer—more of a candle, really—but even he’s not that dumb. He’s got enough animal cunning to avoid getting caught at least.

Gamzee just stands there and stares at the ground. Karkat can make out his profile through the mesh; he’s chewing on his lower lip, shifting nervously from foot to foot and avoiding eye contact like his life depends on it. His whole skinny body seems to be drawn tight, pulling away from Cal as much as he possibly can without actually moving. If Karkat didn’t know better, he would think Cal was here to beat him up again, but this has been going on for a while, and Gamzee hasn’t had any bruises, any—

“What do you think you’re waiting around for?” Cal snaps, and Karkat jumps at the sudden half-shout. Gamzee jumps too, almost a cringe, and then he bows his head again and mumbles something that might be an apology. He…sinks down to his knees, what the fuck—

Karkat’s brain doesn’t catch up on what’s going on until Cal starts to unzip his jeans. His other hand goes out and grabs a handful of Gamzee’s dreads, pulls hard—not even pulling him closer, just yanking until Gamzee’s as high on his knees as he can stretch without getting up, gasping in pain. Cal watches him the whole time, and the look on his face is sickeningly bright and interested, almost curious. He shows no sign of pity—his hand slides inside his jeans as he twists, and he loosens his grip a little but doesn’t let go of his handful of hair. Something—one of those little colorful beaded wraps Gamzee was so proud of—breaks as Caliborn twists it; he makes a disgusted little noise and lets go just long enough to shake the beads off of his fingers before winding his fingers through again.

“These are so fucking gross,” he says, and tugs a little again. “Make a good handle, but. Ugly and gross as fuck, just like you. You should cut them off.”

Gamzee’s eyes widen ever-so-slightly (since Karkat knew him in middle school he’s been taking care of those fucking things, his hair is one of the few things he  _does_  take care of, Jesus) “I—” he starts, tiny and aborted and almost timid, “…but—”

Cal’s bright smile drops into a snarl so fast it’s like he slipped on a mask—or took one off. The sneer fits on his face far better than the smile. (His sneer is almost like his smile, really, but there’s this vicious edge to it, hungry, and it gets hungrier with every little bit of pain and his hand is still in his jeans, god,  _god—_ ) He shakes Gamzee a little, tilts his head back until he has to look up and meet his eyes.

“ _You’re going to cut them off,_ ” he says, soft and hoarse and dangerous, and Gamzee opens his mouth once—hesitates—closes it again.

“… _okay_ ,” he says, and his voice hitches a little, he has to swallow hard in the middle of the word. “…yeah. I’ll…okay.”

“Thought so,” says Caliborn. “Now shut the fuck up. And keep making that gross, ugly face. Where your mouth hangs open like that. Makes it fucking clear what you're good for!” And he lets out a sudden great, loud bellow of laughter—Karkat jumps, and realizes he’s been standing, wide-eyed, breathing hard. Staring. Just staring, letting this happen in front of him, oh god, Cal was always a bully but this shit is seriously fucked up—

“Hey!”

He doesn’t really realize the voice that’s echoing off the walls is his until Cal and Gamzee both turn to look at him. Gamzee’s face is strangely blank, his eyes look… _wrong_ , dull and unfocused even as something glitters suspiciously wet at the corners.

“Wh-what—” No, no fucking  _stutter_ , Karkat has dealt with bullies all his life, a sign of weakness is the last thing he needs right now. All or nothing, and he just threw in for all, if this is how he dies, he dies with fucking honor like a goddamn warrior of holy  _shit_  Cal is big. Getting hit by those fists would be like getting hit with a pair of tattooed sledgehammers. He has snarling green skulls on the backs of his hands, his nails are roughly filed into sharp claws, there are green snakes with red eyes winding up his neck under his jacket and the image of the drawings in Gamzee’s sketchbook come back all of a sudden. Clawed hands. Skull faces. Snakes and chains and nooses.

Karkat takes a deep breath, stands up as tall as he can, and looks Cal straight in the eyes. “—what do you think you’re fucking doing?!”

“I dropped something,” says Cal, and he holds Karkat’s glare and fucking  _smiles._  Doesn’t even bother to let go of Gamzee’s hair. He turns a little bit to face Karkat—Gamzee makes a hoarse sound and pitches forward onto his hands, arching his neck at a painful angle to stop Cal from pulling any more. “…he was picking it up for me. Like a good friend.” He finally lets go. Gamzee stays where he is.

“—like hell he was,” says Karkat, and it doesn’t hardly even shake at all, like he’s not trembling from head to toe with nervous fury—holy shit Cal’s bigger up close. He’s not as tall as Gamzee, but he’s built like a brick shithouse. “C’mon Gamzee, let’s get out of here.”

Gamzee is staring at the ground. He hasn’t gotten up off his knees. His eyes flicker up to Karkat’s face—his dark cheeks and his pointy noise are tinted a blotchy, humiliated red and his eyes are far too bright. He looks back down at the ground and doesn’t move.

“Gamzee?”

“Good boy!” Caliborn jeers—it’s cruel and mocking and it sounds  _dirty_  and somehow it makes the reality of what had been about to happen even worse. This can’t actually be real, people are assholes but they don’t  _actually_  treat each other like property, don’t just treat people like trash without thinking about it, they  _don’t do this_  and Karkat’s best friend isn’t kneeling on the ground with that horrible, terrifyingly dead look in his eyes—“You stay down there. I’ll get back to you in a second.”

He lets go and moves in one smooth movement, and Karkat takes half a step back, but not far enough. Cal snags him by his jacket and pulls him further inside, slams the door behind him and pushes him up against the wall. His other hand comes up faster than sight and Karkat chokes as it seizes hard around his throat.

Cal’s breath reeks of cigarette smoke and something chemical and sharp. His pupils are massive, he’s breathing hard and fast and when his tongue darts out to wet his lips Karkat flinches—it’s split at the tip, forked like a snake’s. Gamzee jerks forward, eyes wide and panicky, and Cal whips around, still pinning Karkat against the wall. Gamzee flinches from his glare and crumples back down again, staring at the floor.

“Yeah,” says Cal derisively. “That’s what I  _thought_.”

“Why are you—letting this asshole push you around—” Karkat coughs and claws at the hands on his throat—Cal is holding on tight enough his vision is starting to swim, can’t get a good breath—

“He doesn’t have a choice,” says Caliborn casually, and grins like a shark. “…I’ve got the goods on his brother. His dad too. They’d go away. Guess how long?  _A long fucking time_.” He shrugs. “—sure it was a long time ago, times were tight. Too broke to take care of their squalling little brat.” He jerks his head back pointedly at the figure behind him on the ground—Gamzee twitches and huddles in a little bit smaller. “—where to get money? When the bitch spawned a baby, and then died. Who would shut up the baby, while they got jobs? So they broke the law! A lot of laws.”

“You’re— _blackmailing_ —?”

“I just told him I knew what they did,” Cal says, and shrugs. His smile is poisonous. “…he was the one who said  _don’t tell anyone_ ,  _I’ll do_  anything _—_ ”

“You’re fucking  _disgusting_!” Karkat kicks out at him—Cal stares at him for a second, and then he yanks him away from the wall, hauls back a huge fist and hits him hard in the stomach. While he’s still reeling, one big fist closes in his jacket again, and Cal half-drags him back towards Gamzee, further into the room. A second later, it's clear why--even if someone opened the door, they would have to be a few steps inside before they could actually see Cal, half-lifting Karkat off the ground. See Gamzee, still kneeling there on the floor, huddled miserably in on himself.

“ _I’m_ disgusting?” Cal repeats, and he’s still smiling but there’s a dangerous edge to it now. “— _he’s_  disgusting. Fucking look at him! I have to close my eyes the whole time, and pretend he’s a pretty girl! A really sexy slut, one with big tits and and a hot face. Who knows how to swallow. And doesn’t throw up when you’re done. Better than nothing, but he isn’t good enough to be a slut.” He frowns. “…you get what you pay for,” he says, almost musingly. “—and. He was free. I guess I’m not surprised.”

Gamzee makes a tiny, crushed sound of pain, but when Karkat glances over at him he’s not looking at Caliborn. He’s not even staring down at the ground anymore.

He’s looking past both of them, toward the open door. Where Kurloz Makara is standing as still as a statue, with a face so ashen he looks like he’s bleeding out.

“--Kurloz--” Gamzee starts to say, but he doesn’t even finish the word before Kurloz goes past Karkat at a dead sprint and hits Caliborn so hard something goes  _crack_ , hits him so hard his knuckles come back smeared red. Caliborn is a big guy, but he’s not all that fast and Kurloz moves like a striking snake. By the time Cal recovers and gets his fists up, Kurloz has backed off, reaching into his pocket for something, keeping his other fist up in piecemeal protection as Cal swears and spits. Kurloz’s face when he’s angry is fucking  _scary_. It’s enough to make Karkat believe the stories that go around about him, about the crimes he’s committed and the time he’s done.

Karkat is almost expecting some kind of heroic declaration--or any kind of declaration at all, maybe a shout of rage--but Kurloz is utterly silent. His face is twisted up into a soundless snarl.

“...Kurloz,” says Gamzee again, and he sounds utterly numb and lost, almost plaintive. “--I--what--” Cal is still staggering; he’s got one hand clamped to his nose and blood pouring through his fingers, holy shit that’s actual blood, that’s a  _lot_ of real actual blood, it looks like his nose is completely ruined and Kurloz just flicked out a fucking  _switchblade_ \--

“Kurloz!”

Gamzee is on his feet, staggering a little in his hurry, diving forward before his brother can make a move. “--no, no no no, bro c’mon you don’t wanna do this, please don’t fucking do this--”

“I  _do._  Want to  _fucking DO THIS!_ “

There are very few people who can say they’ve even heard Kurloz Makara say a single word. Karkat would bet he’s the only one outside of his family who’s ever heard him shout like that and lived to tell the tale, and it may or may not be the most unbelievably fucking terrifying things he’s ever heard. Kurloz’s shoulders are heaving, his voice is raw and caustic with fury, and he holds the knife like he knows how to use it. Gamzee winces--he looks more upset now than he did before, more panicky and scared.

“You won’t just go to juvie this time,” he pleads, and Kurloz makes a derisive noise, eyes still fixed on Cal. “--Dad needs you, okay--fuck,  _I_ need you, we need you home with us. Come on bro, put it down. Put it down.”

Kurloz stares at him and, slowly, the knife starts to lower. Cal is taking bubbling, growling breaths, faster and faster, his face is twisting up in anger, but Kurloz doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes are fixed on his little brother.

“... _I wanna kill him_ ,” he says, almost plaintively, and for a second Gamzee’s face twitches, for a second there’s fury bubbling under the surface inside both of them the same. He takes a step forward, opens his mouth to say something--and then he just takes a deep breath, reaches out, and gently lays his hand over his brother’s, coaxing his fingers loose. Kurloz’s hand drops empty to his side. “I wanna hurt him--”

“...I know,” says Gamzee, and crumples forward as Caliborn’s elbow connects with the back of his head with a horrible  _crack_. The knife spins away into a dark corner and Cal goes right over Gamzee as he falls, not seeming to care whether he steps on him or not, wild-eyed and roaring like an animal. Kurloz is already bringing his hands up, but he has to hesitate for a split second, he reaches for his brother as he goes down, and Cal’s fist gets him squarely in the face and sets him staggering. Cal doesn’t stop to enjoy the view--he pulls back the other fist and lunges again, fully intent on punching until Kurloz stops fighting back or moving or  _breathing_  it doesn’t matter because this one is going to land too and Kurloz might be tough but--

Karkat makes a split second decision fueled purely by rage, hatred and adrenaline. He screams at the top of his lungs and sprints forward, and Cal roars in fury and frustration as Karkat jumps and locks his arms haphazardly around Cal’s neck, squeezing like his life depends on it. (Which it might, holy shit,  _holy shit bad idea--!_

Kurloz grabs a hold of Cal’s shirt, hauls him forward, and hits him with all his strength.

Cal jerks so hard with the force of the blow, Karkat almost falls off of him--and then, abruptly, slumps. He topples down onto his knees and Karkat lets go and drops off of him as he crumples onto the ground, eyes staring blankly ahead, definitely unconscious. His nose is bleeding, hard, his face is black and blue. Karkat lands near Gamzee when he lets go, and as soon as his head stops spinning he crawls forward and leans over him; he’s curled up into a ball, and he’s so still Karkat’s afraid for a second he’s passed out.

There’s a massive, dirty boot-print on his side where Cal stepped on him in his mad rush to get at Kurloz, and when Karkat touches it Gamzee shifts and makes a horrible, choking, painful sound. Karkat glances up to say something and his heart skips a beat; Kurloz is standing over Cal’s limp body with a look on his face like pure ice, and he lines his foot up with Cal’s  _head_  and lifts it slowly--

“Kurloz!”

He glances up, sees Karkat watching. Doesn’t lower his foot, but doesn’t stomp down either. Reserving judgment. Karkat has to take a few wheezing breaths before he can even get the words out (fuck asthma, seriously).

“...Gamzee,” he gets out, and Kurloz twitches. “--he said--Gamzee--he doesn’t want--”

Kurloz’s mouth tightens to a hard, thin line, but then he looks at his brother, lying on the ground, and urgency seems to overpower that icy hatred. He lowers his foot (to the ground, not to Cal’s face, thank god) ( _you want him to do it, you want Cal to never come near your best friend again, you want_ ) and walks over his body to come kneel next to Gamzee too. When he puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder, Gamzee stirs again.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” says Karkat a little bit weakly, and Kurloz blows a long breath out through his nose and nods.

“... _Gamzee_ ,” he says, very quietly, and shakes his shoulder. “ _Little brother, come back now._ “ He looks his brother over, quickly, like he’s done this before, scanning for injuries; he notices the same spot Karkat did and runs his hands over it, pushing cautiously at Gamzee’s side through his shirt and Gamzee gasps, eyes snapping open.

He looks at his brother, then Karkat, and the look that flashes over his face is terrible. He turns his face towards the ground and curls away from them and doesn’t say a word.

Kurloz and Karkat have probably exchanged less than a hundred words in Karkat’s entire life of knowing Gamzee, but at this moment that doesn’t really matter. They look at each other, down at Gamzee. Back at each other. Kurloz is frowning, tense and unhappy. Karkat is doing his best not to do anything stupid like--oh, for example--start sobbing. That would be unbelievably stupid.

“Gamzee,” he says instead. “You okay?”

It’s a stupid question, and he deserves the withering look Kurloz gives him when Gamzee makes a tiny, pained noise and minutely shakes his head, still not looking at either one of them. Kurloz reaches out instead, entirely focused on his brother, ignoring Karkat, and slips his thin fingers under Gamzee’s hand, picking it up enough to thread their fingers together and hold on. There’s a few long seconds of stillness, and then Gamzee takes a shuddering breath and squeezes gently.

They get him upright, eventually; his ribs aren’t broken, Kurloz says, with professional surety, but they’re going to be really sore for a while and there’s going to be nasty bruises. Gamzee’s not the only one; Kurloz’s cheekbone has a nasty, swelling bruise on it where Cal hit him, and his knuckles are torn from punching him. Karkat is still wheezing a little bit.

They leave Cal there on the ground--Kurloz spits on his unconscious body and neither of the other two say a word to stop him. Gamzee’s hands curl into fists for a second. Karkat takes a hold of his wrist and leads him away.

They end up sitting on the ground in the big open garage that connects the theatre department’s backstage to the outside. The musical this year already happened; the place is deserted, dusty and windy and cool. Nobody walks past to notice them there, a rough circle of kids in dark clothes sitting on the floor--Gamzee is a little further away, sits a little smaller, doesn’t look at either of them. For a while, all three of them just sit there and breathe.

“So...how long?” Karkat asks finally, because the silence is worse than anything, and Gamzee winces.

“... _couple weeks,_ “ he says, barely audible. Karkat glances at Kurloz, expecting the same almost-relief on his face (still too long, the moment it started it had been going on for too long, but not as long as he’d been afraid)--but Kurloz’s face is stony. He doesn’t say a word, just pulls something out of his jacket and slides it onto the ground between them.

It’s a sketchbook, already open to one of the first pages; a self-portrait of Gamzee on his knees, slit open and bleeding, with a massive, clawed hand in his hair. There are half-hearted drawings around it, the grinning people, the happy, spinning shapes...they’re unfinished, scribbled angrily out. In one or two places the paper is warped and wrinkled from drops of water, the ink from his pen smeared.

The date at the top of the page is back in August. The beginning of the year. Gamzee doesn’t look at either of them.

“ _Weeks_ ,” says Kurloz, very very softly. “... _a couple weeks, huh._ “

“--don’t tell dad,” says Gamzee, very fast and all in one breath, and Kurloz closes his eyes and takes a deep breath through his nose. “C’mon man, _please_ , you can’t tell him, motherfucking  _promise_  me.”

“Why.”

“Because he’ll do somethin’ stupid, he’ll do some stupid shit and then Cal’s just got more on both of your and--I--you can’t--” Gamzee is shaking now, suddenly trembling, eyes wide. Kurloz’s brows furrow, not from anger this time; he leans forward, worried. Gamzee jerks away from his hand like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it. “He, he never, I can’t--I can deal with it, I can keep dealing with it, he never even fucked me, he doesn’t fuck guys, he said--it’s okay--”

That is the last straw.

“It’s  _not fucking okay!_ “ Karkat bursts out at the top of his lungs, and Gamzee jumps and then flinches away from him as he slams a hand down on the table in frustration. “It’s not okay for him to  _blackmail_  you and fuck with your head and get off on hurting you, there isn’t a single part of this whole goddamn mother _fucking_  thing that’s okay! He won’t stop this, Gamzee, he’s not going to  _stop_! He’ll take your whole life if he can get away with it, that’s what he does _!_ “

“So--what?” Gamzee says, and his voice is very small. “What do I  _do_ , I don’t--if they go to jail, I--” he rakes his hands through his dreadlocks--winces as his fingers tangle for a second at the sore spot where Caliborn had a hold of him. He’s older than Karkat, but he looks so much younger for a second it’s painful to see.

“He said he’d get us sent to jail?”

The question is sudden and strangely urgent. Kurloz is frowning, but not unhappily--thoughtfully. Gamzee blinks at him. Sniffs hard and scrubs a hand over his eyes.

“...I...he, just, uh. Fuck, I dunno, he said he’d got proof you...you stabbed a guy, and you’d done some breaking and entering jobs, uh--”

“Gamzee,” says Kurloz, very quietly. “...brother, I done all my time. For all my crimes I ever done, I  _did that time already_. Far as I know, so did dad. Even if he tells the cops, they know that shit.” He takes a deep breath and lets it back out again. “...I got one last assault charge they’ll call in if I catch their eye too much, but that was just a fight and the other guy went for me first. Could get me for this fight here but that son of a bitch started it and you’re both here to tell them that.”

Gamzee is staring at him, wide-eyed, uncomprehending. Kurloz leans forward like he’s going to put a hand on his shoulder. Stops. Lowers his hand again.

“... _he didn’t have a_ single motherfucking thing _,”_  he says softly. “... _there ain’t a thing he can do to take us away from you._ “

Gamzee opens his mouth. Makes the briefest beginning of a sound.

He stands up, and he walks away.

Karkat starts to reach after him--Kurloz grabs his arm and shakes his head as Gamzee slips out through the cracked-open door.

“We should--”

Kurloz just shakes his head. He stands up too, hunched and tired, and tilts his face up towards the distant ceiling. The empty room rings with the far-away sound of raindrops on the roof, and Kurloz shakes his head one last time, stands slowly up, and vanishes through the door into the rainy greyness beyond.


	3. Chapter 3

Gamzee doesn’t come to school the next day.

Or the next.

Or the next.  Cal comes to school after two days—his nose is crooked and bruised and one of his eyes is black.  Words appear on the chalkboards in empty classrooms, scribbled rough and raw in permanent marker,  _Will suck cock for drugs, call Gamzee Makara_.  A phone number.  Obscene drawings that are just barely recognizable as crude caricatures and illustrations of their equally crude messages.  Cal watches Karkat across the cafeteria and smiles with bloodshot eyes. Karkat sends Gamzee texts, at least one every day even after it's clear that Gamzee's not going to answer.

Gamzee doesn’t come to school.

Gamzee doesn’t come to school.

Kurloz doesn’t show his face around the school again.  Karkat suspects, when he can let himself think about it without being so angry he has to stop immediately, that Kurloz is feeling about the same thing he is—that if he gets near Cal again he’s going to try to kill him and then there would be even more shit to deal with.  So he bites down so hard on his lip it bleeds, and he waits.

But a week and a half goes by and it’s Wednesday, art class all alone  _again_ , when Karkat finally snaps.

Fuck this.  Fuck not knowing what’s going on with his best friend, fuck waiting around for him to get through whatever he’s doing on his own, fuck that stupid, cowardly part that’s been whispering  _he’ll show up when he’s ready_  this whole time. 

Time to bite the bullet.  Time to go visit the Makaras.

\--

The apartment is a rickety old building, a couple of rooms over a convenience store that had been empty and deserted for years before the Makaras moved in.  Now the store part is a house as well—rooms built out of old shelves and paint smeared on the glass that makes them look like stained glass and hides the inside from view.  The sliding door is ripped out; there’s a regular wooden door where it used to be, bizarre and incongruous in the middle of all the painted windows. 

Karkat hesitates for a second outside the door, and then raises a fist and knocks.  No answer.  He pounds on it again, louder, just in case there’s someone in there who didn’t hear him, but it’s just silent inside.  He can’t even hear the sound of voices.

Maybe they’re not actually home.  Karkat sighs hard, reaches out to knock one last time—

Mr. Makara opens the door.

This wasn’t in the plan.  Karkat balks and takes about three steps back in a hurry and Mr. Makara looks down on him like he’s judging whether or not to twist Karkat’s head off his shoulders.  He has the same features as his sons; the nose, the bright, terrifyingly sharp eyes, the heavy eyelashes and the dreadlocks, although his are tied back in a low ponytail and Karkat can’t see how long they are.  If he’s continuing the trend of his sons’ hair, his have to be long as all fucking hell. He’s a bit lighter, more caramel-brown than Gamzee or Kurloz’s deep, rich brown skin—the middle-eastern side of the family, apparently.  His hooked nose looks like it’s been broken at least once.

“…not buyin’,” he rumbles finally, this great huge voice like a heavily-accented avalanche.  “Clear out, motherfucker.”

“I’m here to see…Gamzee…?”

Mr. Makara’s face darkens even more than it already was.  He looks murderous.  He moves over a little; his body blocks any view Karkat may have had of the room beyond him.

“What for?”

“Because I’m worried!”  Fuck, you don’t even think about how much you swear until you’re standing in front of your best friend’s dad and he’s looking bloody murder at you.  God.  “He’s missed a whole fu—a whole  _week and a half_  of school, is he okay?”

Mr. Makara’s face seems to soften, just a little bit.

“…no,” he says, a lot more quietly—his voice vibrates right into Karkat’s  _bones_ , Jesus.  “Wouldn’t call it ‘okay’.  Who wants to know.”

“Karkat,” tries Karkat.  “Karkat Vantas?”  He’s been to their house a few times, but he’s never actually talked to Gamzee’s dad before, and he’s avoided being seen by him as much as possible.  Mr. Makara scares him.  A bit.  Just a little.

…okay maybe kind of a lot.  Mr. Makara’s reputation around town is even darker and more scandalous than Kurloz’s.  Not even thirty-five, with a son who’s getting close to twenty and another one that’s seventeen.  Never married their mother, dead now from unknown causes. (People stopped whispering about murder after he heard someone imply he’d had something to do with her death and put them in the hospital.)  Sells bizarre paintings to mysterious buyers for surprisingly large amounts of money and then continues to live in a tiny apartment and converted convenience store that looks kind of like a crack house. 

All three of the Makaras are that weird blend of art and brutality that puts them in the newspapers at least once a year.  (Drawing, painting, music and crime.)  But Mr. Makara has been around the longest and has the biggest reputation, which is only helped along by the earrings, the scars, the tattoos up to his shoulders, the dreadlocks and the tendency to start bellowing at people incomprehensibly in Arabic when he gets pissed off—

“…Karkat.”  Mr. Makara’s hand drops from its protective grasp on the doorframe.  His defensive posture is relaxing, little by little.  “Yeah, heard of you, little motherfucker.  Gamzee’s friend.”

“Yeah, since like preschool.”  The room beyond is a little bit dim, but Karkat can just about make out a corner of a kitchen table, a cheesy, cheap-looking lamp just kind of left in the middle of it to light the room.  Kurloz is in there too, wearing black sweatpants and no shirt, leaning back in a chair with his feet up on the table.  He’s…reading a book.  Listening to music, by the shiny black and silver headphones.  His hair is down, and it looks wet; there’s a towel around his bare shoulders. 

“Hey!”  Mr. Makara yells back over his shoulder, and Kurloz jumps a little and sits up, tugging off one headphone.  Mr. Makara says something fast and incomprehensible, and a second later Karkat realizes that’s because he’s not speaking English—it makes sense, probably, that they don’t speak a lot of English around the house, but it’s still unnerving not knowing what’s being said about him.  Kurloz sits up even further, eyes sharpening.  Swings his feet off the table and nods. 

Mr. Makara turns back to the door.  “….tried to make him go,” he growls, and frowns.  “…he wouldn’t go.”

Kurloz comes up to the door now too.  The white ink tattoos don’t stop at his arms, like Karkat sort of assumed they did; he’s got them all down his chest, the crisp outline of his breastbone, every rib and the arch of his pelvis over the waistline of his sweatpants.  He half-turns to glance back further into the house—Karkat can see the fine, white line of a tattooed shoulder blade, meticulously-detailed vertebrae.

“Can I see him?”

They share a glance. 

“…he ain’t real keen on seein’ folks,” says Mr. Makara slowly.  “…Not us, even.  You motherfuckin’ figure he’ll see you?”

Shit.

“…yeah,” says Karkat, dry-mouthed.

“Why?”

“Because.”  Shit, shit shit shit.

“Because.  Motherfucking.   _What._ ”

“— _because you’re the ones he was trying to protect and now it hurts when he looks at you_ ,” Karkat blurts out, all in one breath like the motherfucking winner he is, and then he just squeezes his eyes shut and waits to die.

He doesn’t die.  There’s a long few seconds of complete silence, and Karkat cracks an eye open again when no death seems to be actively happening. The Makaras are staring at him with identical strange, unreadable expressions.

“… _I know_ ,” says Kurloz, and his voice is just as soft as it ever was, but it’s even hoarser.  He sounds ( _fuck, fuck_ fuck) he sounds like he’s been crying.  Or yelling,  _screaming_.  There are dark shadows under his eyes.  His knuckles are bandaged. “… _we know._ ”

“Needs someone to talk to,” says his dad, and crosses his arms over his chest.  “Ain’t us.  Figure it’s you, little Vantas.  Could be you.”

Karkat starts inside—stops.

“…do you…?” he starts, but Mr. Makara is already shaking his head.

“Dunno what happened,” he growls.  “Don’t know who did it.  My boys think they can deal with this shit on their own, well, that’s theirs to do.”  He cracks a smile that looks more like a wild animal’s snarl.  “… _they_   _figure I’d go after whoever hurt my baby boy_ ,” he says, and a nasty, breathless shiver runs down Karkat’s spine as the tone to his voice, the almost subsonic snarl underneath it.  “ _Maybe they’re right._   You just take care of him, Vantas.”

They finally step to either side, and watch him as he ducks between their towering forms and into the dimness of the room behind them.  

Karkat knows the way up to Gamzee’s room already; he hurries off, putting as much space between himself and those intense, dark-eyed glares as possible.  Behind him, Kurloz takes his father by the arm and signs something, and Mr. Makara replies in Arabic again, slow and tired and angry and—Karkat thinks—maybe sad.  He bends his head to get under the door, ducks out into the light and pulls it shut behind him.

Kurloz stand there in front of the door for a long moment, slumps and runs his hand through his hair with a long, soft sight.  And then Karkat is turning the corner to climb the stairs and he’s out of sight.

Gamzee’s door is upstairs and on the right.  Karkat has been up there at least a hundred times, and he doesn’t even come over to Gamzee’s house nearly as often as Gamzee has come over to Karkat’s.  The door isn’t locked, like Karkat was afraid of—but it is closed.  That door has never ever been closed.  Not as long as Karkat has known him. 

If Gamzee was going to let people in when they knocked, the door would be open.  Karkat opens the door and slips through into the dimness on the other side.

Gamzee’s room is dark, blinds pulled down over the windows, and it’s  _papered_  with drawings.  Drawings of bodies twisted into knots, arched in pain, sliced and slashed open, skewered and beaten.  There are holes in the wall—Karkat is ninety percent sure that if he checked, they would fit with Gamzee’s fists.  It smells like sweat and rotting food and unwashed body. 

There’s a futon in the corner; a lump of blankets curled up on it.  Karkat closes the door very, very quietly.  Silence for a long, long second.  The covered form curls up even tighter. 

“ _…go the fuck away_.” 

“Gamzee.”

A pause.  Gamzee is silent—Karkat catches sight of his fingers, wrapped around the hem of his ancient-looking, patched blanket.  They’re shaking.

“It’s Karkat, uh…” he steps a little further into the room, uncomfortable.  Scattered through the drawings, there are more portraits of Cal; leering, scowling, sneering.  One or two of them have tears and holes in them where someone obviously attacked them.  “…I was…worried.”

Long silence.

“… _sorry,_ ” says Gamzee, very small.  “… _’m fine._ ”

“You’re really not fucking fine.”

Gamzee doesn’t answer.  Yeah, this might not be the way to do this.

“Hey,” says Karkat, a little bit gentler.  Gentle has never really come naturally to him, but at least whatever creepy tone of voice he ends up with it seems to get Gamzee’s attention.  He moves his head a little, turning one ear in Karkat’s direction.  “Listen, can you…can you sit up, dude, I feel weird talking to a big pile of blankets and your skinny-ass feet.”

Gamzee mumbles something incoherent, but he slowly pulls himself up and into a hunched sitting position.  His cheeks are hollow, his eyes are puffy and red and his hair is a wreck.  He’s wearing his oldest, shittiest T-shirt—it’s so huge it looks like he probably stole it from his dad—and a pair of jeans that is almost in shreds at the hems.  He looks like a picture of misery. 

“…Karkat,” he says.  He opens his mouth to say more, but nothing comes out.  Closes it again.

“Holy shit, man,” says Karkat, and edges forward a little.  Gamzee hesitates, then moves over, gives him space on the other end of the futon to squeeze in.  He smells almost as bad as he looks.  There are huge shadows under his eyes.  “You look like the fucking—walking dead or some bullshit, when was the last time you  _ate_?”

Gamzee mumbles something like “… _last night_ …?”

“ _What_  did you eat?”

Gamzee glances over at the corner of the room—piles of shitty chip bags and chocolate bar wrappers and what looks suspiciously like a single microwaveable package of ravioli from god-knows-where. 

 _“…_ You had  _junk food,_ ” Karkat says, clear and loud.  “ _Last night_.  Gamzee for fuck’s sake, when was the last time you ate something that  _didn’t_  come in a shiny foil wrapper?”

Gamzee pauses, thinking it over.  Shrugs.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” 

“…’m not hungry,” says Gamzee, almost resentfully, and hunches down miserably in his blankets. 

Karkat opens his mouth to yell, and then forces it shut again.  There’s a long moment of silence.

“…but…you should be,” he says, finally, almost controlled.  “By now you  _should_  be hungry, it’s kind of even weirder for some reason you’re  _not._ ”

Gamzee shrugs minutely.  He’s staring at his bare, bony feet.  Karkat stares at them too, and scoots a little bit closer—Gamzee winces away from contact.

“…Gamzee,” says Karkat finally, when he doesn’t seem to be answering.  “…I think Kurloz and your dad are  _scared_  for you.  Like, not even worried, I swear to god they’re  _scared_.”

He flinches.  “—told them I’m fine,” he says, and there’s a strange kind of desperation in his voice.  “—you gotta make sure they know, okay, fuck—I told them—”

“You can tell them how fine you are all you want, man, you’re still locked in your room—I think your dad is a couple days away from murdering someone, you should have seen the look he gave me when I told him I was here to see—”

“… _how much did Cal tell?_ ”

It’s fast and soft and painful and it stops Karkat dead.  Gamzee is hunched low in his blankets, running his fingers through his hair, not looking at him. 

Oh.

So that’s what’s eating him.

Cal  _has_  been talking, some, spreading whispers and rumors more than he’s announcing it from the rooftops.  But Karkat’s not sure how much of what he’s said he should relay to Gamzee—at least, not when he’s already so emotionally off-balance.  Mostly, people who do hear about it haven’t believed it, or if they have they’ve asked him about it.  He’s heard someone broke Cal’s nose over it, and by the fact that Cal isn’t making a huge roaring deal about it he has to guess it was a girl.  Cal would never admit to a girl messing up his face.  (A girl who’s wickedly fast with a cane, a girl with dark glasses who can get close to you twice as fast as you expect, yeah, he thinks he might know who broke Cal’s nose.) Gamzee’s a loser, but he’s got  _friends_  in this school.  There are a lot of people who owe him things, who’ve known him for years, who already knew Cal was a festering piece of puke-smeared shit.

“…he’s…said some stuff,” says Karkat finally.  “Nothing too…specific, none of that shit.  But people just come to me and ask what the fuck is going on.  They know I know you.  So I just…tell them the truth.”

Gamzee winces.   _“What’s the truth_?”  He mumbles, and drops his chin down onto his arms.  “That I—”

“That Cal blackmailed you into doing shit you didn’t want to do,” says Karkat firmly.  “…and tried to strangle me and kill your brother for stopping him.  The school board is looking at his record and not liking what they see, okay?  People keep asking me if you’re alright and I have to tell them  _I don’t know_  because you’re locked up in your room and I haven’t seen you.”

Gamzee winces.  Fuck, making him feel even shittier is the last thing Karkat came here to do.

“…you can stay in here if you want,” says Karkat, although the words come out slow and painful.  “Probably wouldn’t want to deal with that shithole school either if I was you.  Just don’t, like…turn it into some terrible fucking slow death by grime and starvation.  You look like death.  You smell kind of like death too.  And then when you want to come back, y’know…”

He stops, and the pain in his chest throbs suddenly, harsh and weird and sweet.

“… _it’s kind of fucking lonely, okay_ ,” he mutters finally, and pulls his knees up to his chest, folding his arms over them to rest his chin on.  Not looking at his face, that would make this impossible to even say and it needs to be said.  “… _without you there, I mean.  Kind of.  Miss you._ ”

Gamzee’s breath catches—catches again, wetter and hoarser.  Oh fuck, okay, well, it was a miracle this conversation went so far without him breaking down anyway.  Karkat gets the feeling this has been coming for a while.

“… _didn’t figure anybody’d…want me to…_ ” Gamzee starts, choked and small.  “— _would care if I…_ ” he covers his face with one hand; his voice cracks and breaks and dies away. 

His shoulders are bony and shaking when Karkat hugs him, and his spine is a line of clear, sharp knobs under his skin, even through his shirt.  He shudders when he’s touched, but he doesn’t pull away—after a second or two he even leans in a little, and Karkat gets a hand around behind his head and rubs the back of his neck.  His skin feels sticky and greasy and nasty but the way he slumps over and lets himself be held is a terrible relief.

“ _We want you back,_ ” says Karkat, and doesn’t even start to fucking tear up when he admits it.  At all.  “ _You_ idiot _, of course we want you back._ ”

They sit there for a long time.  Gamzee cries for some of it—Karkat cries for some of it.  For some of it Gamzee’s shoulders shake and his voice rises and his hands start to clench into fists—Karkat lets him get up, hit things, yell, swear, and then leans back in and hugs him again and lets the anger drain away. 

And then Gamzee sighs and finally relaxes against his shoulder, and it’s over.  This spell, at least.  Karkat sighs as well, and ruffles up his knotted dreads—they’re all unkempt and nasty and for some reason that’s surprisingly painful to notice.

“Let me go for a second, I’m gonna open the window,” he says, and Gamzee groans against his shoulder.  “Oh come on, I would have to move eventually, It’s not like I can pick you up and carry you everywhere like a really ugly-ass baby.”

He sniffs and laughs and lets go and Karkat gets up and pries open the old, creaky window.  Fresh air washes over him into the room along with a warm square of golden sunlight.  Outside, someone is mowing.  It smells like hot ground and cut grass.  It’s nice being reminded there’s something outside of this room and its wallpaper of creepy drawings and the air of misery.

The room looks even dirtier with the fresh light, but at least some of the stink of unwashed Gamzee goes away. Karkat comes back to the bed and drops down onto it and Gamzee immediately comes over to lean on him again.  Karkat holds out all of thirty seconds and then sighs and acquiesces, running his fingernails up and down the nobbles of Gamzee’s spine. 

“You need a bath too,” he says firmly, and Gamzee groans again, complaining.  Karkat ignores this on principle.  “And a meal.  Your dad makes fucking delicious food, and you need something that’s actually hot and wasn’t mass-produced in some shitty factory.  Swear to god you’ll go and get some food and clean up.”

Gamzee sighs long and low and put-upon, but he holds out a hand.  “…’s a motherfuckin’ pinky swear,” he says dolefully, and Karkat nods and hooks their fingers together. 

“Good.”  Hesitates a second.  “…now.  We need to actually talk about shit.”

“Awww, fuck,” says Gamzee, “…come on, best friend—”

“No, we need to talk about this because you locking yourself up and not eating isn’t okay,” says Karkat firmly.  “I’m in charge of taking care of you, remember?”

(It’s a bargain they made in kindergarten a few days after they met each other, it’s the root and the foundation of their relationship and Karkat takes care of Gamzee and Gamzee soothes Karkat’s rough edges and that’s how it’s always been.)

“Okay,” says Gamzee, and rakes his hair out of his face.  “…yeah.  Okay.”

“First thing,” says Karkat, and bops him on the back of the head.  Gamzee yelps and jumps, looking betrayed, and Karkat frowns at him.  “—why the fuck didn’t you answer my texts?”  Karkat sits up and pulls it out, types a question mark and sends it; off in the wreck of Gamzee’s room, there’s a faint buzz.  “—it’s not even dead this time!  What the fuck?”

“I,” says Gamzee, and stops, mouthing silently.  He’s pulling himself in tight again.  “…I just…” and then Karkat gets up and heads determinedly for the source of the buzzing and he sits up fast and hard.  “—no, man, don’t—”

“Here.”  Karkat picks it up—it’s lying in the corner, under a…suspiciously phone-sized dent.  The screen is cracked.  “…did you  _throw_  this?”

Gamzee’s silence is its own answer.  Karkat sighs and comes back over, flicking the phone open.  “Did you even get—?”

“Karkat.”

“I mean, I sent enough of the fucking things—”

“ _Karkat_.”

“—didn’t want to hear from me you could have just told me to stop—”

And then Karkat stops dead in his tracks, staring at the screen.

“…why are there... _almost a hundred_ texts in your inbox?”  He asks slowly, but he doesn’t sound like he’s listening for an answer.  His hand is shaking minutely.  “…Gamzee, who else was texting you?”

“He’s stopped now,” mumbles Gamzee, and he reaches out for his phone.  Karkat doesn’t hand it over.  He hesitates, and then taps on the icon.

( _HELLO AGAIN SLUT_ )

( _I’D LIKE TO PLAY A GAME._ )

Karkat’s eyes flicker over the screen, and his face gets slowly redder and redder, his eyebrows drop lower and angrier and his lip twists into a sneer. 

“What,” he says, almost level, “—the actual.   _FUCK._ ”

Gamzee drags a hand over his face.  “…bro—”

“I’m going to kill him.”

“Karkat—”

“I’m going to kill him,  _I’m going to fucking kill him,_ who thinks of sick shit like this—?!”

“Karkat, hey—”

“—could get him in a whole shitload of trouble over this, putting thought into this stuff, it’s like, planning assault, fuck, there’s something seriously fucked up in his head—”

 _“Karkat!_ ”

Karkat looks up.  Gamzee holds out a hand.

“…can I have my phone,” he says, quietly. 

“Gamzee—”

“He’s said worse,” says Gamzee, and takes the phone.  He looks down at the screen for a second, and then flicks the lock button with one bony finger.  The screen goes dark.  “…gets off on that shit, I think.  More than having me…” he looks away.  The silence stretches out, sharp and hard like knives. 

“…I—” Karkat starts finally, choked and uncertain, but Gamzee looks up at him at the sound of the word, smiling all of a sudden.  He spins his phone through his fingers, fast and jittery and nervous. 

“He has a lot of ideas, for stuff like that,” he says, sudden and fast, all in one breath like he can’t hold the words in anymore.  “He’d tell me, he’d tell me everything he was thinking about, he’d tell me, maybe someday I could help him with that, too, he…I…”

“We have to—Jesus, Gamzee, we’ve  _got to_ turn him in,” says Karkat, and Gamzee shudders. 

“…don’t want the police nowhere even near my family,” he says, very softly.  “Not even at Kurloz’s word, I…It’s just me, I don’t need anybody to—it was my own stupid fault—”

“Fuck that!”  Karkat sits up straighter, incensed.  “—fuck that bullshit, none of this was your fault!”

Gamzee flinches back, surprised—then tightens up, shoulders tensing.  “But I—”

“You remember that guy we read about in class the other day?”

The answer is probably no.  Gamzee seems to be a little bit poleaxed by the sudden change of subject; he stares, mouth hanging slightly open.

“The one in the book, who let himself get caught to let the rest of his family get away,” Karkat prompts, and Gamzee nods.  He’d cried in class when they got to that part—thank god he’d been in the back of the room and Karkat had been able to keep him pretty quiet.  Gamzee’s noisy when he cries.  “That was a brave thing for him to do, right?”

“Yeah.”  Gamzee looks kind of teary just at the thought—yeah, this is kind of an emotionally unstable time to bring that up.  Oh well. 

“Did he know the army was coming to save them a few days later?”

He squints, thinking.  Right, yeah, his reading comprehension hasn’t ever been the best. 

“No, he didn’t,” Karkat answers for him.  “It turns out he didn’t have to let them do that to him in the first place.  You were upset about that, remember?  So does that make him stupid for doing it?”

What?”  He looks horrified by the thought—and doesn’t seem to have even an inkling of the comparison Karkat is making, thank god he couldn’t metaphor his way out of a paper bag.  “No, fuck no.”  He sniffs—his eyes are watering a little at the thought.  “Motherfucker did right by his family—”

“Okay, I want you to imagine a different story now,” Karkat interrupts him—his face is really warm all of a sudden, but he perseveres. “Can you do that?”

Gamzee nods obediently.  He seems distracted from the overwhelming air of misery that had been hanging over the room when Karkat arrived—Karkat still can’t help but cast a longing gaze at the half-open window.  He should have opened it all the way, the air is still too warm and doesn’t smell all that great. 

“Okay,” he says instead.  “So, imagine there’s this kid, okay?    He’s kind of an idiot but he’s a really nice guy.”

“Aw,” says Gamzee, touched as always by the slightest indication of a friendly person existing somewhere else in the world.  “Cool.”

“Some absolute asshole does something shitty to him,” Karkat says, and Gamzee’s smile drops.

“Aw shit,” he says sadly.  “Does he have to?”

“That’s what happens in the story, Gamzee,” says Karkat firmly, and Gamzee sighs.  “The guy doesn’t want to kill him like they tried to in the book we read in class, but he hurts him and humiliates him and makes him feel like shit, and tells him he’ll do something terrible to the people he loves if he doesn’t just stand there and take it.  Is that his fault, or the fault of the guy who hurt him?”

“…the guy who hurt him.”  Gamzee resettles himself in his blankets.  He looks upset again—over the plight of the fictional character Karkat literally made up five seconds ago, probably.  Stupid asshole loves everyone too much, even the people who don’t exist, and something in the middle of Karkat’s chest is tight and painful.  “…’cause like…he had to, right?”  And of course when it comes down to moral judgment he can’t just come up with his own answer.  Glances over at Karkat like he’s asking for an answer checked on his homework.  “Right?”

“Yup.”  Karkat takes a deep breath and lets it back out again.  “…Cal hurts you and fucks with your head and makes you feel like shit, is that your fault or his?”

“It—” starts Gamzee, and then the words seem to catch up with him.  He stops dead.  “But,” he says.  “That’s not—”

“It is, though.”

“But they were—” Gamzee makes a helpless gesture that’s apparently supposed to sum up the difference between himself and literally every other person in the world.  Karkat does not help him out this time.  “I’m not…”

“…you did right by your family,” Karkat echoes back at him, and Gamzee presses the heels of his hands into his watering eyes and sniffs, hard.  “Cal is a freak who gets off on fucking with people and hurting them when they can’t fight back.  How the  _hell_  is that your fault?”

Gamzee’s face crumples again.  Shit.  Karkat leans in and pulls him forward and he clings on hard, rocking back and forth.  “… _love you, man_ ,” Gamzee mumbles, and there’s a terrible, wretched sincerity to his voice.   “— _fuckin’—god._ ”

In front of anyone else, anywhere, Karkat would tell him to stop being such an idiot.

“… _yeah,_ ” he says instead, and squeezes him back.  “ _Me too.”_


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> good lord I forgot an entire chapter on AO3. That's embarrassing.

Mr. Makara is sitting at the kitchen table when Karkat comes down, and Gamzee balks and starts to pull back, towards the dark safety of his room; Karkat holds onto him and shakes his head.  As they stand there, Gamzee’s dad leans forward over the table—hunches down and puts his head in his hands.  He doesn’t make a sound; his whole body is perfectly still with a strange, tight sort of misery.  Kurloz glances over at him and his face is so fucking _sad_ , so much more open than it would be if he knew someone was watching.  He reaches over and lays a hand on his father’s shoulder—Mr. Makara raises his head and says something that makes Gamzee’s hand close on Karkat’s like a vice, his breath catch in his throat. 

He starts forward so suddenly and so fast he almost tugs Karkat over, and then his father and brother look up at the staggering clatter he makes as he comes in, and he freezes in their gazes.

 For a second, nobody talks.  And then Mr. Makara stands up and walks slowly towards them.  His face is fearsomely impassive, not angry but terrifying in its blankness, and Gamzee cringes a little bit as his father leans down and puts both big hands on his skinny shoulders.

“… _you need to eat,_ ” he says.

And that’s it.  He stands up and lets go of Gamzee’s shoulders, turns around and walks back into the kitchen.  Mysterious bangs and clatters.  Gamzee stares after him, and then, hesitantly, looks at Kurloz.

Kurloz looks back at him, and then he stands up too, and does the same slow walk over. 

“… _I should hit you_ ,” he says, very quietly, and glances at Karkat, then back over his shoulder at the figure of his father, clattering around in the kitchen.  He nods back toward their dad and says something soft and fast that Karkat doesn’t catch—not English.  Gamzee’s lower lip trembles for a second, but he nods.  Kurloz takes his face in both hands and leans in and for a second Karkat thinks he’s going to _kiss_ him and he’s doing some fast re-calculating about the Makara family—but Kurloz bumps their foreheads together and then just wraps him up in a hug so big he almost lifts him off the ground.  Gamzee makes a startled sound and then a softer sound, a sadder sound, and hugs him back.  (“ _Sorry_ ,” he’s saying, “— _sorry, sorry sorry—”_ )

His father emerges from the kitchen in a cloud of steam and delicious smells with a plate in his hands heaped with meat and potatoes and onions and spices that make Karkat’s eyes water. Kurloz doesn’t let go of his brother and Mr. Makara doesn’t bother them, although he’s grinning to himself as he sets the table.  There’s a single thin, golden ring glittering on one hand, and Karkat stares at it instead of watching the Makara brothers hug for an uncomfortably long and emotional time.  He wonders for a second, if they were so tight on money, why the ring didn’t get sold.  Then he realizes which finger it’s on and hates himself a little bit. 

“Eat,” Mr. Makara booms, and his sons finally break apart as he slides the plate onto the table. “Warm up what you want, there’s a shit-load in the fridge.” He looks over at Karkat.  “—you too.”

“But I—”

“ _You too,_ ” repeats Mr. Makara firmly, and Karkat is herded into a seat and sat down for a really _massive_ lunch.  It becomes clear in pretty short order why the Makara boys have managed to grow so tall, although why they aren’t also a good deal less skinny is still a mystery to Karkat.  Gamzee hesitates to take the first bite, but once he does Karkat sees his eyes go wide and immediately he starts shoveling food down like he hasn’t eaten in a week.

Okay, bad choice of words.  Karkat eats too, and watches him.  Everyone is watching him.  He’s focused on his food—or pretending to be—and doesn’t seem to notice, but there are three pairs of eyes fixed on him and when he puts down the plate and sighs in satisfaction three other pairs of lungs sigh a little as well, in relief.

“ _Wow_ ,” he says, and smiles at his dad.  “…can I get more?”

His father gestures expansively to the kitchen.  “Motherfucking stuff yourself, you idiot,” he says. “Eat till you’re full.  No puking.”

Gamzee nods and springs up out of his seat with more energy than Karkat has seen him move with all year.  ( _All year Cal was fucking with him_ all goddamn year—).  He vanishes off into the kitchen.  Mr. Makara heaps his own plate with more of the…whatever it is this stuff is called, something full of meat and potatoes and onions…and digs in again.

“…don’t know what you did,” he says, quietly.  “…shit is a motherfuckin miracle.”

“I should have showed up sooner,” Karkat mumbles, and keeps his eyes fixed on the kitchen door—Gamzee clatters around the kitchen, pulling out dishes and shoving things in the dingy, dented microwave.  He can’t hear anything.  “…he’s been sitting there beating up on himself the whole time and I should’ve—“ Karkat stops, because he can almost _feel_ Mr. Makara listening closely and Kurloz is giving him a sharp, warning look.  Right, right, he doesn’t know.  Trying to keep Gamzee’s dad from murdering anyone, right.  “…somehow decided this whole shitty thing was his fault,” Karkat finishes awkwardly, and take another big bite.  “…such a moron.”

Then he flinches, because shit, badmouthing Gamzee is the last thing he needs to do right now, especially in front of his protective, terrifying family.  But they don’t try to kill him—they don’t even hit him.  They just both nod and roll their eyes in weird unison. 

“He’s a sweet boy,” rumbles Mr. Makara, “…gets it from his mom.  But he ain’t too gifted in some spots.”

Kurloz’s hands flicker, a spell of lightning-fast sign-language.  Mr. Makara laughs.

“…There is that,” he says.  “That’s my side of the motherfuckin’ family though.  We all know you’re the brainy one.”

“Who’s what the motherfuck?”  Says Gamzee, emerging from the kitchen with another full plate, and his dad turns around in his chair to look at him without looking even a little bit guilty. 

“I said, Kurloz is the smart one,” he says, mildly, and Gamzee nods enthusiastically. 

“Preach,” he says.  “You got brains though too, _baba_ , come on.  You two smart as fuck.”

Kurloz signs something—Gamzee glances up, watching, and signs something back.  Switches halfway to talking, “—but not stupid enough I don’t know how dumb I am, come on.”  Kurloz rolls his eyes again and flips his brother off.  Mr. Makara rumbles something in Arabic.  Gamzee answers in kind _and_ signs at Kurloz at the same time and Karkat sits there and stares with his fork halfway to his mouth as an argument in three languages happens over his head.

“…that time at the lake, is all I’m saying,” says Gamzee finally, and flicks a piece of potato at Kurloz when he starts trying to argue again. “Come on, I’m always fucking up, you know I am.  Hell, I—” and then he stops, and his face falls.  Karkat can _see_ him remembering why he was so miserable in the first place.

“Gamzee,” he says, and Gamzee looks up at him.  “Don’t do that.  We talked about this.  Not your fucking fault, remember?”

The other two glance at each other and Kurloz’s mouth tightens into a tight little upset line.  A muscle twitches in his dad’s jaw, but he doesn’t ask. 

“But—” Gamzee starts, and Karkat glares at him. 

“Say it.”

“Aw, best friend—”

“Say.  It.”

“…not my fault,” he says, reluctantly. 

“Not your fault,” repeats his dad, and Kurloz nods and says it too, quiet and hoarse, _not your fault._

“You—don’t know what happened though—” starts Gamzee, but his dad shakes his head. 

“ _Baby boy_ ,” he says, “…thing you’re missing is, I don’t motherfucking care.”

Gamzee opens his mouth, and then closes it again and looks down at his food, chewing on his lip.  Karkat has the terrible feeling Gamzee’s going to cry if they keep being too nice to him—maybe his brother and his dad notice too, because they go back to eating and don’t push it any further. 

“You need a shower, too,” Karkat points out finally, and Gamzee jumps a little and then nods.  “You smell awful.”  He glances at the other two for support—Kurloz is impassive, but Karkat thinks he sees the barest hint of a twitch at the corner of his mouth.  Mr. Makara just shrugs.

“Fried my nose years ago,” he rumbles.  “Couldn’t tell you.”

“Well he does.”  Karkat frowns at Gamzee. “—you do.”  He’s still in his ratty old clothes, too.  “…and change your clothes.  And fix your dreads, Jesus.”

Gamzee scratches the back of his neck and grins, and the grin is stupidly comforting.  Karkat doesn't look at either of the other two Makaras.  His ears burn.  It’s not exactly new to anybody that he “storms around after Gamzee like a pissed-off mother hen”—Sollux’s words, not his—but all of a sudden, with Gamzee so battered and emotionally fragile and his family watching both of them like outsiders looking in, it’s incredibly embarrassing.

"...yeah." says Gamzee quietly, finally, takes another bite of food, tries to swallow too much, and chokes.  His dad reaches across with one huge hand and slaps him on the back.  He looks up with watering eyes, and goes for another smile, although this one turns out significantly less solid, contorted by coughing.  "-- _kay-_ -"

“Well—well good.” Karkat resettles himself in his chair uncomfortably and doesn’t look at Mr. Makara or acknowledge how his eyes flicker from Karkat to his son and back again.  “Yeah.  So.  God, just get a drink of water, will you.”

After dinner, Karkat goes upstairs with Gamzee and helps him clean out his room.  Kurloz holds a garbage bag silently, tattooed lips tightening every time Gamzee crumples up a picture of Cal’s face with excess force, dark-eyed and frowning.  Their dad stays downstairs— _painting_ , Kurloz signs as Gamzee translates, _he paints at night_.  Another set of flashing signs—Gamzee winces. 

“…and…when he’s upset,” he finishes reluctantly, and yanks a set of drawings off the wall with violent force, tearing a few of them in half along roughly-drawn, hacked-in lines.  Kurloz watches his back and chews on his lower lip.  Karkat takes down all the pictures of Cal he can find before Gamzee gets to them, and they clean in silence. 

After the pictures are all down there’s considerably more talking and the mood lightens a little—without the pictures hung up, the murals on the walls are clear again, and as the afternoon starts to dim into evening outside Gamzee flicks the lights on so Karkat can manhandle an ancient vacuum across the floor, swearing at the top of his lungs over its guttural, choking roars.  Gamzee laughs himself breathless, holding his stomach and rocking on his bed.  Kurloz’s mouth twitches at the corners and his dark eyes crinkle up. 

And then Mr. Makara bangs on the ceiling of his painting room—the floor of Gamzee’s bedroom, as Karkat learns abruptly when the noise makes him jump and drop a book—and Kurloz swings off the bed to go and give artistic council or some shit.

Karkat and Gamzee work in silence for a while—Gamzee is humming, which Karkat considers a positive sign.  And then, finally, Karkat sits up for a second from the back-breaking work of hauling knotted clothes out from under the desk and frowns at Gamzee across the room.

“We’ve got this shit almost sorted out, I think,” Karkat says firmly, and Gamzee grins at him, chin in his hands like a dreamy schoolgirl out of some stupid after-school special.  “—you need to go in and wash your hair.”

Gamzee nods.  Karkat keeps cleaning for several seconds before he looks up again and realizes that Gamzee’s still sitting there, a tall, scrawny pillar of dark clothing and unrelenting staring.  Karkat scowls.

“…what?  Is some of your gross shit on my face?”

“…can you…” Gamzee makes a helpless sort of shrugging gesture.  “… _uh…_ ”

“Spit it out.”  Karkat fishes around under the bed and pulls out an empty pop can.  “Ugh, how fucking old is this…?”

“Can you—” Gamzee starts again, and this time his eyes flicker up to Karkat, to one side to the bathroom door—back down. 

“… _’s that weird?_ ”  Gamzee mumbles, and hunches down like he already knows what the answer is going to be. 

It should be.  Really, _really_ it should be, because this is the sort of shit that guys don’t do with each other, especially not highschool guys, and especially not highschool guys who aren’t fucking.  (Karkat couldn’t even contemplate it either, god no, that’s so weird.)  But it’s been a tradition since they were little kids and somehow while everyone else was growing out of ‘here, scrub my back, I’ll wash your hair after’, they just…didn’t. 

Karkat has pointedly not mentioned this to _anyone_ at school, and made it very clear to Gamzee that if he does either, Karkat’s going to punch him so hard in the face he’ll have to screw his head back on afterwards. 

So yeah, of course it’s fucking _weird._   But the fact that all of a sudden he feels like he needs to ask makes Karkat angry as fuck and, more importantly, makes some kind of weird, unhappy ache suddenly thump right into his chest and seize up his lungs. 

“…no,” he says, almost defiantly.  “No, it’s not any fucking weirder than the last hundred times you needed help getting your scrawny ass clean.  Why should it be?”

Gamzee doesn’t look convinced.  Karkat glowers at him.  “Somebody’s got to make sure you don’t drown in the goddamn bathtub,” he says, and tries to pretend his face isn’t burning.  “It’s me.  I’m the one taking care of you.  Now go get in already, I’ll be in in a second.”

\--

The confidence sounds real.  It does, Karkat knows it does, but he still has to stop outside the door to the bathroom for a second and take a few deep breaths.  It’s not—

Okay, it’s maybe a little bit about seeing his best friend naked.  But it’s not—

  1.   It’s not.  It’s just not.  It’s not for the same reasons anybody else would have, it’s not something sexual, it’s not a—not like—



It’s just so goddamn _intimate_ , and Karkat doesn’t use that word out loud _ever_ but he’s watched enough romcoms and read enough of his mom’s old novels that it bubbles to the surface at moments like this.  _Intimate._   Goddammit.  It’s—just—( _vulnerable_ ) no, goddammit.  It’s— _(romantic_ )—fuck.

Karkat takes a deep breath and shoves through the door. 

Gamzee is hunched down in the bathtub already.  He’s toweling at his head—taking care of his hair first, god, of course he would.  He’s got his knees pulled up to his chest, and he’s so _goddamn thin_ , there’s still a fading bruise on his side where Cal stepped on him.  He’s staring off into the distance—he sits up a little when Karkat comes in, and his face brightens. 

“Hey,” he says.

“…hey,” says Karkat, and his voice comes out very dry.  “…done with your dreads?”

Gamzee ducks his head into a nod, and Karkat fishes around in his pockets and pulls out a bright purple hair-tie almost without thinking about it.  Then he catches himself and hates himself a little because goddammit he is _not_ Gamzee’s _mom._

Gamzee doesn’t seem to notice his sudden withdrawal—he snatches up the hair-tie as Karkat starts to pull back, pulls his dreads up gingerly and ties them in a rough ponytail.  Then he smiles up at Karkat, and even through all the worrying, that smile makes weird, warm things happen in his chest.

“…okay, best friend,” he says peacefully.  “All readied up.”

Gamzee stays quiet while Karkat cleans his back for him, and Karkat doesn’t bother to try to make conversation.  Hell, it’s pretty likely Gamzee’s just fallen asleep sitting up in the tub—wouldn’t be the first time, this kind of shit really puts him to sleep.   So Karkat just keeps making slow circles over the bumps of his best friend’s spine, up his neck, careful not to get his hair wet now it’s already washed—out over his shoulderblades where they stand out sharp under his skin, and down to his ribs, careful of the big, black blotch of bruising on his side—

…and feels the tiniest little tremble through Gamzee’s shoulders.  He sniffs once, like he doesn’t want Karkat to hear. 

“Gamzee,” Karkat says firmly.

Gamzee doesn’t answer.  His arms are crossed over his knees; his hands clench hard on his forearms, he buries his face in his arms and sniffs again.  Double fuck.  Ultimate fucking _fuck_.  This was intimate enough already (stupid word, stupid fucking word)

“Shh,” he says, but it comes out more like a sigh than an order.  He rubs a few more hesitant circles on Gamzee’s back—Gamzee lets out a tiny, hitching sob and huddles in tighter.  “Jesus Christ.  Gamzee.  _Gamzee._   Come on, man.”

“ _…’m okay,_ ” Gamzee chokes into his arms, barely audible, and sniffs again.  Karkat sighs. 

“You’re okay.”

“ _—gonna be okay_.”

“Of course you are.  _Shh._ ”

“ _Didn’t—_ I’m not—”

“ _I know you didn’t.”_ Karkat edges around the tub and gets one arm around his best friend’s shoulders in an awkward hug—bathwater soaks through his shirt, but that’s not as important as the awful, pathetic sound of somebody trying not to cry out loud, or the wetness on his skin when he squeezes and his temple brushes Gamzee’s cheek.  “This awful bullshit—”

“ _Don’t._ ”  Gamzee mumbles, and turns his face into Karkat’s hair.  His voice is a tired little sigh, broken around the sound of his sobs.  “ _…not—not now, best friend, not now, just…_ ”

“Yeah,” says Karkat, and doesn’t curse, or cry, or hit anything because _it’s not fucking fair._   “…yeah.  Okay.”

\--

By the time Karkat coaxes him out of the tub, Gamzee is red-eyed and pruny from spending so much time crying in the water, and He parts himself from Karkat just long enough to put on a pair of underwear that doesn’t smell bad and some new jeans before he comes sidling back into his personal space and follows him around like a lovesick puppy dog.  His hair is clean, if still messy and badly in need of some maintenance.  His skin is back to a nice, smooth brown—except for his bruised knuckles from punching the walls, and the dark, muddy outline of Cal’s boot on his side.  His hipbones still stick out obscenely far.  Karkat can still see his ribs, and he wonders how the _fuck_ Gamzee can still be this skinny when Mr. Makara obviously cooks enough for twice the number of people in his family. 

“Best friend.”

Karkat blinks.  He’s been going through the motions of spraying out the tub (the water isn’t _brown_ or anything, but there’s a certain amount of cloudiness to it that he doesn’t want lingering around in the tub, thanks).  Gamzee is leaning over around him, one long arm draped over his shoulders.

“—I, yes, what?”  He frowns and straightens up a little, shaking off his thoughts.  “—the hell do you want now?  For God’s sake come down here where I can see you without twisting around and breaking my back.”

Gamzee follows orders, sitting cross-legged on the bath-mat.  He’s chewing on his lips again.

“…so I know it’s a time for a brother to be headed home, and, and all, but—”

“Well yeah.” Karkat regards the tub, then finally shuts off the water, shaking drops off his hands.  “I mean, unless you’re thinking I’m gonna stick around here for a good old-fashioned Makara Family Sleepover.”

…silence.  Karkat glances around—Gamzee is still chewing on his lip, kind of hunched up and looking at his skinny bare feet.

 “…just…” Gamzee is obviously doing that thing where his brain fights through the constant fog of his blissful optimism enough to let him know he should probably be embarrassed—his cheeks are going a ruddy cinnamon-red under the brown.  “… _feel better.  You here and all._ ”

The things he does for friendship. 

“Sure,” Karkat says, against all common fucking sense, and pulls out his phone.  “Sure, sure, fine.  Let me call dad.”

Gamzee looks happier than Karkat thinks he’s ever seen him.  He hangs on Karkat and rhapsodizes about how much he fucking loves him * Karkat tries to negotiate a conversation with his dad. 

Karkat has been over to Gamzee’s house for years, but he’s never stayed over before—his dad is openly surprised.  Karkat distracts Gamzee by having him go and tell his dad as well, and then while he’s gone takes the time to inform Mr. Vantas that Gamzee’s “got a problem he’s dealing with” and that Karkat’s needed here right now.

Kankri’s voice pipes up loudly in the background of the call but his dad, thank god, doesn’t believe in prying too much.  He just makes a thoughtful noise, and then tells Karkat to call him when he needs a ride home.

In a sudden fit of mad affection, Karkat accidentally tells his dad he loves him, and then hangs up on his disbelieving, happy reply, scarlet to the ears, just as Gamzee comes loping back into the room and drops down next to him.

 “Dad says that’s good, he was making enough dinner for you anyway,” he says brightly, and then looks at Karkat for half a second before ducking down and hugging him again.  “… _thanks, bro._ ”

\--

Dinner is just as confusing as lunch was, if not moreso—Mr. Makara’s hands are covered in paint and he has a brush stuck behind one ear, and he and Kurloz spend most of the meal engaged in what seems to be some kind of art debate.  Gamzee interjects occasionally on one side or the other, “—yeah,” and “No bro I liked that shit better,” and “—ain’t that what makes art all miraculous-like though?” and Karkat eats until he can’t eat anymore and watches the leftovers get swept away into the kitchen to be stored. 

After that, Karkat goes and clears out space on Gamzee’s floor, leaving the Makaras down in the kitchen.  He’s half-hoping that by the time he gets back they’ll have had some kind of cathartic shouting match, sorted out some of the shit that’s still tainting every laugh and friendly gesture, but instead he gets back and Mr. Makara has Gamzee slumped at the kitchen table, rolling his dreads for him.  Then Kurloz goes sloping off (to the room that used to be the store’s walk-in cooler back when it still had power) to practice his cello, Mr. Makara (chewing on his brush) departs to keep working on his mysterious paintings, and Gamzee and Karkat are unceremoniously sent to bed early.

Karkat is pretty sure he should have anticipated that as soon as Gamzee found out his best friend was sleeping on the floor, he would want to sleep on the floor too.  But he didn’t and they have something of a fight about it—which is to say Karkat yelling about how dumb the idea of both of them sleeping on the floor is, and Gamzee smiling and laughing and making comforting like _shhshsh_ motions with his hands.  But in the end, there they are on the floor, Gamzee huddled up in a big old blanket that’s been washed so many times it looks like it’s about to fall apart at the seams, and Karkat wrapped up in a big poofy thing with cartoon characters on it.

They ease down on the ground next to each other in the tight space of the bedroom floor, and Gamzee laughs a lot at the awkward way they have to sort of shuffle around and push and squeeze.  In the end Gamzee gets himself wrapped over and around, and Karkat gets pressed up with his back against Gamzee’s chest, his face toward the door and the wall with Gamzee’s bed.  It’s basically spooning.  Karkat closes his eyes and enjoys the fuck out of himself now that there’s nobody here to see, and behind him Gamzee buries his face in Karkat’s hair and smiles.

The next thing Karkat knows, he’s awake again.

Somebody said something really quietly—there’s a ray of light spilling in dim but insistent through the cracked-open door and a tall figure is standing silhouetted in the doorway.  Golden earrings, long dreadlocks—loose now, not tied up, but even in the dark Karkat can tell it’s Kurloz.  Gamzee stirs sleepily and props himself up on an elbow, yawning.

“… _what?_ ” he says blearily.  Kurloz raises his hands a little further so the light is on them, and repeats himself.  “Oh.  _Nnngh_ —” he flops his head back down.  “… _bro it’s like ass in the morning._ ”

Kurloz repeats himself again, and this time ends whatever he says with a sharp, decisive gesture—Gamzee sighs. 

“… _well dad shoulda come up and got me his_ self _then,_ ” he mumbles, and pushes himself slowly upright, careful not to disturb Karkat.  For a second he kneels there, and then one cool knuckle traces Karkat’s cheek.  Karkat jumps a little, and then quickly turns it into a sleepy mumble and half-turns, toward Gamzee, away from Kurloz standing in the doorway.  Gamzee makes a soft little noise Karkat can’t parse, strokes his cheek again gently, and then stands up and steps carefully over him toward the door.

“ _Shut up_ ,” he says, and Kurloz snorts through his nose and then closes the door behind them.

Karkat waits in the dark for sixty seconds exactly before he scrambles up out of the blankets and creeps to the door.  When he carefully opens it, the hallway outside is dark, but there’s the faintest hint of a glow coming up from the bottom of the stairs, and the distant murmur of quiet voices.

Karkat creeps down the stairs, hating himself with every step, and stops just short of the dim light that edges out of the doorway to glimmer dimly on the wall beyond.  Gamzee’s is the closest—sitting by the kitchen door, probably.  A giant, stretched shadow lies over the slice of counter Karkat can see through the doorway, probably Mr. Makara leaning against the wall.  God only knows where Kurloz is, but Karkat can imagine him in the corner, the three Makaras sitting in a triangle around the kitchen, watching each other. 

“—don’t need _to know what happened,_ ” Mr. Makara is saying, “… _to know some fucker hurt you._ Been _hurting you_.”

“Nothing to do with you,” says Gamzee, and his voice is very, very small, pitifully tiny. He sounds so goddamn tired. “Nothing you coulda done, _baba_ —”

“I think you’re lyin’ to me.”  His dad’s voice is very calm.  He rattles something off in Arabic—Gamzee cuts him off, repeating a word, and Karkat can tell by the tone of his voice he’s asking, doesn’t know what it means.  Mr. Makara sighs.  “— _suffering_ ,” he says, slow, like he’s running over the meaning of the words in his head.  “…torture—no.  Pain…ing…hurting.  Your hurting.  I didn’t—I _saw_ it, I didn’t fuckin’ ask.  Try to leave you space.”

Silence for a few seconds—Gamzee makes a terrible little noise. “—no,” he says suddenly, quiet and shaky.  “Bro c’mon, no.  Nothing to do about it now—” Kurloz must be there, signing.  “—You can’t do that though!  You ain’t _either of you_ going after him—”

“Him?”  His dad’s voice is still so calm, just taking note, but it makes a shiver run up Karkat’s spine.

“ _No_ ,” says Gamzee, and there’s a note of panic to his voice but there’s also a sharp snap.  “Kurloz you fucking _swore_ to me you wouldn’t—”

“ _Is_ not knowing _not worse_?” Kurloz’s voice is still hoarse and soft, but there’s a touch of the same sharp snarl under it, and Karkat wavers, fighting himself because _fuck_ he shouldn’t be here, he should go back upstairs and pretend he never heard Gamzee move— “Is it better hearing the _hints_ , brother?  _Should I_ hint _at you the things I did,_ the things _we_ did to take care of—?!”

“ _Kurloz Makara,_ ” Mr. Makara rumbles, and it’s like a thunderstorm, Karkat flattens himself against the wall and holds his breath to keep himself from making a sound.  “ _Bite your fucking tongue._ ”

Kurloz goes silent instantly.  Karkat glances across the room at a flicker of movement—somebody has shifted away from the light and in the dark windows at the front of the house there’s a reflection.  The kitchen is lit up—Karkat is invisible in the shadows, but he can see the reflection of Kurloz, hunched at the table, signing something in sharp little flickers, Gamzee in a chair with a defensive hunch to his shoulders, their father walking slowly back and forth, back and forth, face turned away from Kurloz, ignoring his moving hands. 

“You want him on your side,” Gamzee says, and there’s a desperate kind of certainty to his voice.  “You figure he’ll side with you and you want the fucking _excuse_ but I _won’t have you in jail for me_ —” And Kurloz cuts off signing and _slams_ his hands down on the table—

“Boys!”  Mr. Makara turns sharply, and his sons freeze.  “I told you I didn’t need to motherfucking know and _still you fucking argue._ ”

“ _It’s a burden on you_ ,” Kurloz says, and Karkat cringes at the emotion behind his voice, badly-controlled behind a thin veneer of cold rage.  His voice is still so quiet, but it doesn’t have to be loud, not when he sounds like that.  “ _I’ve seen you_ suffer for us _for_ too fucking long, baba!”

“I am your _motherfucking—_ FATHER.”  Mr. Makara’s voice cracks into a yell for a second, and Karkat flinches.  There’s a moment of silence, and then Mr. Makara continues, considerably quieter but no less angry.  “Whatever suffering you think I have, I promise you—“ he stops for a second, then growls in frustration and goes back to Arabic, fluent and infinitely smoother than his heavily-accented English. 

Kurloz hisses through his teeth.  “—but—”

“We’re going out,” Mr. Makara says, and there’s no questioning that tone of voice.  “Kurloz.”

Kurloz stands up—a clatter of chair legs.  Karkat backs up further toward the stairs, into the shadows. 

“Dad—”

“He’s not going to tell me,” Mr. Makara says sharply, and Gamzee winces back down in the reflection.  “We—” and something in Arabic.  Gamzee responds in kind, but his voice is very small and his father sighs and comes back to put a hand on his head. 

“ _Baby boy_ ,” he says, and Karkat crosses his arms and huddles down and hates himself for listening.  “ _…trust your brother.  Trust me._ ”

He straightens up again, and lets out another long, long sigh. 

“…we’ll get back before sunrise,” he says, and Karkat holds his breath, edging back under the stairs as Mr. Makara appears at the door to the kitchen, pulling on a big black jacket.  ( _Yeah wow_ , his brain murmurs pointlessly, _his dreads are_ freaking long _)_   “Go back to bed, _umri._ ”

There’s a long, long second before Gamzee clears his throat roughly and mumbles something affirmative, and Karkat has known him long enough and has heard the tone enough times recently to know that he’s trying not to break down.  His dad looks away from him, out into the dark front room of their house, blinking into the blackness.  Kurloz comes out behind him; his head is half-turned back, like he’s still trying to keep an eye on his brother as long as he can.  He looks up at his father—Mr. Makara makes a sharp hand gesture that even Karkat can interpret.  _No._

Karkat watches them go to the door; as soon as they’re gone, he backs up the stairs again, as quickly as he can, and less than a minute after he’s back under his blankets again he hears quiet footsteps and sees Gamzee’s thin shape in the door.

“… _Karkat?_ ”

Karkat makes a split-second decision.

“… _mm,_ ” he mumbles, and sits up, rubbing his eyes—they’re watering a little and it is because of—of _stress_ or something, it’s because of stress.  “… _the fuck—w-was the_ shouting _about?_ ”  It breaks into a yawn in the middle—god it’s been a long day.

Gamzee sighs out a curse and comes back into the room, settling down in his blankets again.  “…nothing,” he says, and reaches out to reel Karkat in for a hug, pressing his face against one cold collarbone (he’s always colder, always comforting-cool against Karkat’s skin).  “… _nothing at all, best friend._ ”

There’s silence for another few minutes, and Karkat assumes that Gamzee is going back to sleep—he closes his eyes and tries to do the same, but then the instant he starts to drift off—

“…Karkat?”

“Oh for God’s sake.” Karkat rolls awkwardly over and grabs Gamzee’s face, a hand on each cheek.  “— _what_?”

Gamzee’s skinny cheeks don’t squish very well, but Karkat tries his best.  Gamzee’s voice comes out dumb and lispy with his face all squashed.  He’s not deterred. “…can you read a thing at me?”

“You want a goddamn _bedtime story_?”

Gamzee nods as best he can with his face still clamped between Karkat’s hands, and grins ludicrously between his squished cheeks.  “That shit would be the _bitchtits._ ”

Well what the fuck are you supposed to say to that?

“Okay,” Karkat says, and drags his hands over his face.  “Okay, okay fine.  What do you want to hear?”  He pulls out his phone—the glow is blinding.  “Ow, _fuck!_   What, you want _Goodnight Moon_ or some shit?  Oh no wait, that might be too advanced for you.”  And then, suddenly, an idea stirs in the back of his mind.  “…no okay, I got this.”

Gamzee makes a little questioning noise, and Karkat taps in his dad’s password.  Thank god the old man finally moved into the new age.  He never used to use the internet, just scattered papers all over his study.

“Something my dad wrote.”

Gamzee goes “ _ooooo_ ”.  Karkat elbows him in the stomach. 

“It’s more of his stupid platitude-ridden bullshit, but hell, it’s about family and.  And stuff.  So.  I know you’re all about family and friends and shit.”

Gamzee is quiet for a long second.  When he answers, his voice is very quiet, choked and soft.  “… _all about,_ ” he repeats, and his arm snakes over Karkat’s waist, pulls him close so he can bury his face in Karkat’s thatch of shiny black hair.  “ _All about that shit, best friend._ ”

“Right.”  Karkat takes a deep breath, and feels Gamzee do the same thing behind him, feels his chest move reassuringly strong against his back.  “… _When I said I would take care of a kid of a friend—_ ”

He reads for almost five minutes, and Gamzee’s little “oh”s and “motherfucker”s are getting quieter and more sleepy by the second, and then he shifts his weight, the blanket moves and something lights up behind him.  Karkat blinks and tries to crane his neck to see and Gamzee hurriedly hides his phone again.

“—what the fuck are you doing?”

“…uh…” Gamzee shifts a little, embarrassed and tentatively hopeful.  “… _just…wanna listen to this shit over some time._ ”

“You’re _recording_ me?”

“…yeah?” Gamzee  shrinks down, pulling away a little, and Karkat feels the ease and comfort draining out of him and hates himself a little bit fucking more.  “—sorry.  Sorry, fuck, I’ll—”

“You started halfway through the story, didn’t you?”

Gamzee pauses.   “…yeah?” he says again, and that faint note of hope is back in his voice. 

Karkat sighs, too loud, and scrolls back.  “—fine…” he says, long-suffering and patient, “I’ll go back to the beginning.”

Gamzee doesn’t say anything.  Karkat frowns. 

“…for fuck’s sake, you don’t really think I’m pissed off, do you?  I swear if you don’t figure out sarcasm soon—”

“Shhh.”  Gamzee puts a hand over his mouth.  “… _think I hear my dad getting back.  He’s gonna be pissed if figure I been up talking_ —”

The image of Mr. Makara getting pissed surfaces in Karkat’s mind; he shuts his mouth hard and lies down.  If he listens hard, he can hear what Gamzee heard first—soft footsteps, but heavy enough to make the steps creak.  Gamzee glances back over his shoulder at the door, and then buries his face in Karkat’s back, laughing silently.

“ _Shh, sh_ , _is he going to look in_?”

“ _Always does—_ “

“ _Act asleep you dimwit—_ ”

They barely manage to stop shoving each other and be quiet before the quiet footsteps draw level with the door.  It opens—Karkat stares at the legs of Gamzee’s desk and then closes his eyes and tries to make his face blank and emotionless as the floorboards behind him and Gamzee creak.  Down by their feet.  In front of him, looking down on them—

Something hits Karkat so hard in the stomach he lifts off the ground, slamming backward into Gamzee with a shout of pain that turns into a strangled _HFF_ as the air goes out of him.  He rolls back on the ground, convulsing, wheezing for air and trying not to puke and Gamzee starts to jump up but Karkat’s coughing makes him flinch and as his phone spins away out of his hand, its light gleams nightmarishly uplit on Cal’s fanged, snarling smile.

Gamzee must see the pure horror on Karkat’s face—he spins back around but Cal is on him before he can even get off his knees, bearing him back down to the ground.  “ _Daddy’s finally out of the house you ugly fucking_ slut _,_ ” he’s snarling, and he slams Gamzee back down with one tattooed hand around his throat, catching the wild punch Gamzee throws at his face and pinning down his wrist.  He’s drooling, his eyes are wide and his pupils are pinpricks.  “ _—I’m gonna torture you to death, skin you alive I’m gonna choke you with your own guts—“_ he laughs harshly, breathless, panting like an animal.  “—and then I’m gonna wait here,” he growls, “—gonna stick a knife in your brother’s eyes, twist it around in your dad’s guts _I’m gonna kill all of them_ you shouldn’t have— _fucking—CROSSED ME—_ ”

Karkat throws himself bodily at Cal and slams into his side.  Cal goes over, but keeps a dogged hold on Gamzee’s throat, hauling him over as well—Gamzee wheezes and kicks out in the dark and Karkat yells in pain as one bony heel hits his thigh.  Gamzee flinches and Cal takes the opening and shoves forward, too close to kick, strangling with one hand, wrestling a knife out of his jacket with the other.  He’s _laughing_ and snarling and screaming more filthy, awful things, _I’m gonna cut a hole in you and fuck your corpse how dare you how fucking dare you you ugly shit-skinned whore_ and Karkat pulls at his hands with all his strength but Cal just shakes him off and Gamzee’s struggling is going weaker and weaker—

Karkat slams the door open with a wild kick and hits the wall with a CRACK so hard and loud it sounds like a gun going off.  Cal looks up, grinning vacant and feral and Gamzee’s whole body makes a lashing _snap_ of a movement that throws him sideways.  Gamzee takes a great, wheezing breath and starts coughing, rough, awful noises—Cal is already getting back up, scrambling, knife waving wildly, but at the last second Gamzee jerks to one side as the knife comes slamming down.

For a second Karkat thinks Cal missed—but Gamzee makes a terrible sound and thrashes and the hilt of the hunting knife is still there, Cal’s grip on it is gone but it’s—it’s _in_ him oh god oh god it’s sticking crookedly out of his side and Gamzee reaches down and makes an awful, terrified noise.

And then Cal is gone.

Karkat blinks for a second and then he looks _up_ and Mr. Makara looms over them, holding Cal by the back of his jacket, pulling up so hard his feet don’t touch the ground.  Cal thrashes, momentarily distracted from Gamzee—Mr. Makara grunts as a flailing elbow hits him in the side.

“— _fucking son of a whore you f—_ ”

“ _Sakkir timmak—!_ ” Mr. Makara hisses, and shakes him roughly, but Cal thrashes and jerks forward out of his jacket, landing on the ground and scrambling up.  There’s a flash of light on metal and Gamzee yells in pain again—Cal holds up the knife, splattering drops of Gamzee’s blood, and Gamzee curls in on himself, holding his side, making quiet, awful noises.  Mr. Makara’s eyes flicker down to his son, back to the knife and he seems to be getting taller, looming up, his breathing is heavy and harsh.  Kurloz is in the doorway behind his father—Mr. Makara holds out an arm, barring him from coming in, and rattles out something vicious and snarling that makes Karkat flinch. 

“ _Too late,_ ” Cal rasps, and laughs a harsh, hacking laugh.  His hand is weaving, but the knife stays up, stays pointed at Mr. Makara’s chest and Karkat scrambles forward and grabs Gamzee, pulling him back and pressing a shaky hand hard over the knife wound in his side.  Gamzee’s shirt is already sticky with blood, but the fabric is black and Karkat can’t tell in the dim light how far the damage spreads, how much blood there is— “Too late, ha!  I already stabbed him.  Your bitch son.  You finally both went the fuck outside!  I’ve been waiting.  For such a long fucking time!”

Mr. Makara rumbles something icy—grits his teeth and switches to English again, “— _give me reasons I shouldn’t motherfucking_ kill _you_.”

“Yeah?  You think you would do that?”  Cal waves his knife.  “No!  No you wouldn’t.  Because killing!  You get sent to jail for killing!” His voice is so slurred when it lowers from a frenzied shriek—he’s breathing like he’s just run a mile. 

“ _Been in jail before,_ ” Mr. Makara says, very, very quietly.  “…not such a bad motherfucking _place._   Not if you _earned_ it.”

“No!”

Cal doesn’t turn, and Mr. Makara’s eyes don’t leave his, but his face turns slightly toward Karkat, waiting.

“ _No_?”

“You can’t kill him,” Karkat gets out, and the air feels thick like he’s trying to breathe honey but he forces it through, hating how his voice cracks.  “—you can’t go to jail that’s exactly what Gamzee _didn’t fucking want_ —”

“ _Yeah,_ ” Cal rasps, and laughs harshly, “—yeah, just, what he didn’t want, you should have seen his face when I told him.  That I knew about what you did.  It was almost as funny.  As the first time he choked on my cock.  _HA!_ ” The laugh is barely a laugh, it bursts out of him like a shout of anger and Gamzee’s dad is staring at him with a face like carved stone.  “The dumb.  _Slut._ ”

Karkat jerks to run at Cal—but when he moves there’s a fresh bloom of warm blood under his palm and Gamzee whimpers and he has to stay where he is anger pounding through his veins like acid replacing his blood, _kill him kill him_ KILL HIM _make him_ HURT—

“ _What did you just call my son._ ”

Mr. Makara’s voice is very, very quiet, an awful, low snarl like the beginning of an earthquake and Gamzee shivers and opens his eyes, propped up on Karkat’s lap, staring straight ahead with his face grey and twisted with horror. 

“I said.  He’s a _whore._ ”

Mr. Makara draws tight like a winding spring, and his mouth is all bared teeth and his eyes are wild but the shout that breaks the air isn’t his—Gamzee jerks upright away from Karkat’s hands, holds out a hand and starts up onto his knees as his dad draws back a fist. “No don’t _baba DON’T—!_ ”

Mr. Makara hits like a sledgehammer, one heavy, vicious _jab._   Cal goes over, and now he’s the one wheezing and struggling to breathe, still rasping curses and insults and promising to do— _awful_ things, Jesus Christ.  He falls and Gamzee cowers back away from him, still struggling to breathe and ashen with shock and the pain of moving, eyes wide and wild.  Cal sees him pull back and forgets about his dad, scrambles toward him again, reaches for the hilt of his knife—

Mr. Makara winds his arms under Cal’s and locks his hands behind his head, pulling up hard enough Cal’s feet barely touch the ground—he struggles madly, spitting out insults and slurs and curses through frothy lips, swearing _I’ll kill you I’ll kill them all of them I’ll fucking kill you_ —Mr. Makara’s lip curls and he gives a sharp, vicious _jolt_ , pulling up hard on Cal’s arms, keeping his face out of the way as Cal tries to headbutt him.  Karkat stares blearily up at them as they struggle—the tattoos on Mr. Makara’s arms are really fucking impressive, wow. 

The wedding ring is still glinting on his finger in the dim light, and Karkat’s eyes fix on it, mesmerized by the glinting flashes of gold.  Slowly, as though the thoughts have to force their way through a fog, he picks up Gamzee’s phone, holds it out and takes ten careful photos of Cal’s wild face.  A second later, he loses the phone as something heavy slams into him—Gamzee collapses over sideways against him, face pressed into his shoulder, breathing shallow and tight with pain, and the phone hits the floor and slides off, forgotten.  God god _god_ that’s a lot of blood—

“ _Kurloz,_ ” says Mr. Makara through gritted teeth, and his son comes around, past Karkat like he’s not even there, and cracks his knuckles very carefully on each hand.

Cal is still cursing when Kurloz’s fist hits him, and his voice chokes and dies in the middle of a word.  Mr. Makara drops his unconscious body, lip curling like he’s letting go of something rotting and foul (ha. Haha.  Accurate.) and spits on him, smearing mud from one dirty boot across his back and snarling something derisive and hateful. 

And then, abruptly, he steps past Cal and looks down at Karkat.

“ _Fuck,_ ” he says, very quietly.

Gamzee is shaking so hard his teeth are chattering, so hard he almost shakes off the arm Karkat’s got around him, taking huge, gasping breaths through his bruised throat and when Karkat looks down at him and squeezes his shoulders he half-turns and throws his arm around Karkat’s chest, squeezing weakly, holding onto his bleeding side with blood-stained, white-knuckled hands.

“ _Shhh,_ ” Karkat croaks, and far off, they hear the sound of sirens and Gamzee sobs.  “ _Shh, shshshh,_ Jesus fuck, it’s okay, you’re okay, we’re all okay just press down on it you’re gonna be fine—”

And then a pair of big, wiry arms close around both of them, and the smell of paint and spice and sweat overwhelms everything. 

“ _There now,_ ” Mr. Makara rumbles, soft and low, and a huge hand lands on Karkat’s head, slides over his son’s cheek and covers his teary eyes.  “ _Shhhhh now._ ” And even softer, barely audible, _“…it’s done._   Over now, Gamzee.  _Didn’t even_ kill _him._ ”  For a second his hand is a claw, his voice is a snarl.  Then he softens again, and Karkat didn’t realize he was shaking too but the big hand on his hair is infinitely comforting and he squeezes Gamzee back and breathes, tries to breathe with him, tries to focus, tries to _think_.  Mr. Makara hums in Arabic, and Karkat wants his _dad_ he wants to be _home_ but Mr. Makara is here and huge and bigger than Cal, bigger than fucking _anyone_ and Karkat leans into his careful, heavy hold and shakes against his best friend.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More sound-dips of Caliborn's awfulness in this one, but only briefly. For the purpose of this fic, and to mimic his canon relationships, Kurloz is heterosexual but super hella biromantic.

Things are chaos for a little while after that.  Police are all over the Makaras house, taking the knife and cuffing Cal.  Gamzee is still bleeding when they come and get him into an ambulance, making little wheezing, bubbling noises, and everything is an awful blur on the drive there—darkness and the memory of Cal’s snarling face jumping out at Karkat from the dark behind his eyes every few minutes, like an electric shock. 

And then they’re being settled down in a waiting room and people are saying words like _bleeding, punctured lung, surgery…_

It occurs to Karkat after a small eternity of tense, miserable silence in the waiting room that it would probably be a good idea to call his dad and tell him where he is.  He only gets as far as the word “hospital”.  The shouting is so loud he has to hold the phone away from his ear and for the first time he really _listens_ , hazy through the shock, and realizes that his dad is _scared._   That everything he’s yelling, when Karkat listens past the white noise of _oh great dad’s yelling again_ , is _are you okay_ and _oh god what happened_ and then _Gamzee oh god what the fuck happened to Gamzee is he okay?  Is he going to be okay?_ And halfway through, as the circumstances unfold, _“…give Kurloz the phone._ ”

“—he—he doesn’t talk—”

Karkat’s dad growls.  “ _Not the son,_ ” he says.  “ _Kurloz Sr._ ”

Karkat looks up at Mr. Makara, slumped in a too-small hospital waiting-room seat with his fingers threaded together, face blank.

“Kurloz… _senior_?” he repeats, and Mr. Makara blinks and looks up.  “Uh.”

“I said _hand Makara the_ fucking _phone._ ”

Wordlessly, Karkat hands Makara the fucking phone.

Mr. Makara listens for the first couple of minutes, and then, abruptly, stands up and walks away from the chairs where Karkat and Kurloz are sitting, talking in a hissing half-whisper.  “ _—like I’m happy about this shit—_?” Karkat hears as he walks away, and his dad’s voice in a staticky yell from the phone.  “Fuck _you Vantas.  My debts are paid._ ”

Kurloz glances at Karkat.  Karkat glances back.  And then they stare back at their feet.

Gamzee’s dad and Karkat’s dad yell at each other in the corner of the waiting room for a good hour before their voices start to drop—Mr. Vantas’s finally stops being a staticky howl audible across the room, and Mr. Makara’s tense, hunched shoulders start to relax.  Another ten minutes, and he’s leaned against the wall, looking up at the ceiling, talking like a civil human being, and Karkat is relaxed enough he could almost go to sleep—

“Mr…Makara?”

Kurloz and Karkat both look up.  Over by the wall, Gamzee’s dad says a few short words into the phone and drops it to his side, striding over.  The doctor looks significantly more intimidated the closer he gets, but holds his ground pretty well, all things considered.

“—we, um.”  His eyes flicker down to the tattoos on Mr. Makara’s arms, up to his waist-length dreads in their knot on the back of his head, back up to his face and the scar from left cheekbone to the right corner of his jaw.  For a split second, he seems to lose track of the thought.  “…your son is in stable condition.  We—”

“Can I see him.”

“I’m afraid we need to keep him in recovery for—”

“He’s alright?”

“He was remarkably lucky,” the doctor says, and Karkat snorts bitterly and then blushes as everybody’s eyes flick to him.  “…the knife punctured his left lung but—”

“And you fixed it?  That part?”

“He’ll need to be very careful in the next few weeks to prevent—”

“You fixed it?”

The doctor opens his mouth and then shuts it again.  “…yes.”

“Can I see him?”

“Not for another few hours.”

“Get us then.”

And Mr. Makara goes back to one of the chairs and sits down.  Conversation over.  The doctor stares at him for a second, and then, cautiously, opens his mouth—Mr. Makara opens one eye and makes a quelling little _shush_ motion with one hand.

“My son will live, we can see him later.”

“I—yes—”

“This is all I need.”  Mr. Makara sits back and holds the phone back up to his ear.  “Vantas.”

The doctor stands there for another second—Karkat looks up at him and shrugs, shaking his head a little, and the man turns slowly and walks out, looking disgruntled.  Kurloz goes back to staring at his feet, eyes hooded and distant, hands folded in front of him.  Every so often his fingers will twitch into strange shapes, and Karkat wonders through a haze of fatigue whether you can talk to yourself in sign language.

And then, finally, he’s asleep again.

-

Karkat doesn’t remember having any dreams, but he wakes up breathing like he just ran a marathon, sweaty and clammy.  For a second he doesn’t understand a single goddamn thing—why his diaphragm hurts so bad, why he’s curled up in a chair surrounded by the sound of people talking quietly and walking feet, why the lights are on and florescent bright and why his dad is standing over him.

Then, abruptly, everything comes crashing back.

“Dad,” he rasps, and Mr. Vantas dives down and hugs him so hard he’s half-lifted from his chair.  “ _Ow_ —fuck, dad I’m okay!  I’m okay—”

“ _You could have gotten_ killed,” Mr. Vantas growls, and squeezes him even harder.  “ _Goddammit you are never leaving the house again._ ”

God, everything is so great and so awful both at the same time.  Karkat returns the hug, squeezing back just as hard—his dad grunts and then settles down on the edge of the seat to hold him properly, rocking them back and forth a little.

“ _Jesus,_ ” he says, voice rough, and kisses Karkat’s forehead.  “ _I am going to kick Kurloz right in the—_ ”

“Kankri.”

Karkat glances up and Mr. Makara is looming over them.  Karkat’s dad says something rough and sharp, and it takes Karkat a second to realize that he can’t understand.  And, more important, it’s a kind of incomprehensible that he’s heard before.  Karkat stares at him.

“You speak—”

Mr. Makara rumbles something, almost derisive, but he can’t meet Mr. Vantas’s eyes.  Mr. Vantas’s face does something…weird.  Kind of soft and emotional, and kind of hard and furious.  Karkat grabs his arm.

“Dad, since when do you—”

Mr. Makara says something loud and fast and sharp.  Mr. Vantas and Kurloz the younger both sit up suddenly straighter.  Mr. Vantas looks half shocked, half suspicious.  Kurloz just looks like somebody just punched him.

“… _ana assif,_ ” says Mr. Makara again, quieter, and crosses his arms, muscles working in his jaw.  His back is very straight.  His eyes flick past Mr. Vantas, and for just a second they catch on Karkat’s pale face.  “…I’m fuckin’…sorry.”

Karkat’s dad opens his mouth—makes a tiny noise and then, slowly, closes it again. 

“…yes,” he says, finally, very quietly, and his arm squeezes tight around Karkat’s shoulder.  “…I know.  It wasn’t your—”

“Don’t do the fucking _forgiveness_ thing again,” Mr. Makara hisses, sudden and bitter.  “Always fuckin’—you bleeding heart, goddammit—”

“Well it wasn’t!”

“My house, my fuckin’ _fall-through_ —”

“Kurloz—“

“WHAT THE FUCKING SHIT-DICK IS GOING ON HERE.”

Both of the adults jump.  The rest of the waiting room is almost empty (god what time of the morning is it it has to be close to three now) but the tired-looking woman behind the desk gives Karkat an extremely concerned and offended look.  Karkat doesn’t give a shit.

“You!”  He points at his dad, pulling back out of his arms to stare at him.  “—you _know_ him?  Since when do you speak Arabic?  What the _fuck_ is going on with you two?  And you—” He swings around to Mr. Makara, fearless with confused, exhausted fury.  “What do you mean, _again_?  Where do you know each other from?  And you didn’t even fuck up, what the hell, you didn’t even know what was going on and then a psychopath you didn’t know about broke into your house while you were out!  It’s fucking— _stupid_ to say this shit was your fault so stop apologizing, god!  You’re freaking Kurloz out!”

Kurloz blinks—apparently he wasn’t expecting to be noticed, sitting in the background.  He still looks freaked out—as everyone turns and looks to him his expression smooths hastily out into a blank stare.

There’s a long silence as everybody avoids looking at each other.

“…kid speaks well,” Mr. Makara says quietly, finally.  Mr. Vantas puffs up a little. 

“Damn straight.”  He kisses Karkat’s forehead—Karkat squirms a little and makes a disgusted groaning noise his father completely ignores.  “…I’m sorry too.  You shouldn’t have to apologize for this shit, Kurloz, it’s not your fault.”

Kurloz Sr. looks distinctly disgruntled by this sudden change of policy—he opens his mouth and behind him, somebody clears their throat.

“…Mr. Makara?”

\--

Gamzee isn’t in a real room yet; there are curtains, in a long hallway of other empty almost-rooms made of curtains.  Karkat’s dad insisted he should stay behind, but when Karkat started to as well Mr. Makara rumbled something in Arabic and Mr. Vantas laughed and agreed.  And now here he is, following two pairs of broad shoulders and two long dreadlock ponytails through the quiet hospital hallways.

There’s a nurse standing outside the curtain when they walk up—a short, friendly-looking woman with glasses and bright blue eyes.  She glances up and then does a double-take as Mr. Makara blocks out the lights. 

“Lookin’ for Gamzee,” he says.

“You’re…in the right place,” she says, a little bit weakly, and then glances down at Karkat as they start forward.  “…is…?”

Mr. Makara gives her a look Karkat is very glad isn’t pointed at him.  “He can come in,” he says firmly.  “My son, he’ll need this kid here.”

Something hot and happy and surprised does a weird exploding thing in Karkat’s chest.  The nurse looks from Mr. Makara to Kurloz to Karkat, and then glances down at the folder she’s holding and sighs.  Karkat can almost see her consider protesting and then give up on the idea. 

“…alright,” she says.  “If you’re sure that’s alright.  The doctor did say that visitors were allowed, but…” she hesitates.  “…do your best not to excite him too much.  He’s still waking up.  The police are going to be down in a few—”

“Mm,” says Mr. Makara, and vanishes through the curtain.  Kurloz glances back at Karkat and then ducks forward as well.  He holds the curtain open just a little, waiting for Karkat, and Karkat feels ten times taller.

The feeling only lasts as long as it takes to get into the room. 

Gamzee looks pale and small and still.  There’s some kind of tube in his nose, a blood pressure cuff wrapped around one arm, an IV in one hand.  There’s more medical bullshit than there is…Gamzee.  Karkat’s eyes go immediately to the screen over Gamzee’s bed; numbers that don’t mean anything to him.  His heartbeat seems too slow, the beeps just a little bit too far apart, but that might be his mind playing tricks on him, he is…he’s freaking out.  He’s really freaking the fuck out. 

Gamzee’s dad is leaning over him when Karkat and Kurloz come in, murmuring something—he doesn’t seem to want to touch him, like he’s afraid it’ll hurt him.  Gamzee shifts minutely but doesn’t wake up, and Mr. Makara withdraws, murmuring to himself in Arabic, rubbing a hand roughly over his eyes. 

Kurloz makes a soft noise in the back of his throat—when Karkat looks at him, his brows are drawn into a fierce, concerned scowl.  A second later, he glances back down at Gamzee and understands why.  The nurse is still standing outside when he sticks his head out, running her pen down a checklist and checking it against a screen.  She looks up, startled. 

“He’s, uh…” Karkat tries to keep his voice steady.  “He’s trembling, is that…?”

“It’s the anesthetic,” she says gently, and puts the clipboard down.  “Nothing to worry about.  I’ll go get him some more blankets.”

“…thanks.”  Karkat chews his lip for a minute, and then makes up his mind as she starts to walk away. “—should—shouldn’t he be—?”

She waits patiently.  Karkat takes a deep breath and lets it out.  “—shouldn’t he be— _awake_ by now?” he asks, and his voice cracks in a stupid, embarrassing way.  “Is he gonna be okay?”

“Some people wake up more slowly than others,” she says, and smiles at him.  “…the doctor said he took his surgery very well, actually!  He’s going to have a few painful days, but we’re going to do our best to help with those and make him comfortable and keep him from doing anything too exciting while he heals.”  She giggles— _hoohoo!_ —and turns back to what she was doing, which is pulling blankets out of a metal cabinet down the hall.  “It sounds like he’s had a real humdinger of a time!  For now, I’m glad his family is here.”

She doesn’t ask what Karkat is doing here—Karkat is cravenly glad of that..  Trying to explain what his relationship with Gamzee is—he wouldn’t want to say “a friend” ( _just a friend, we’re_ just _friends_ ) but he’s never ever wanted to do things with Gamzee that…that _boyfriends_ would do…

 Why isn’t there a word for this shit?

The nurse comes back with a pile of blankets that radiate warmth, and Karkat blinks out of his reverie and holds the curtain open for her.  Mr. Makara looks up with fearsome blankness when she comes in; he and Kurloz are bent over Gamzee’s shivering form like a pair of really terrifying guardian angels. After the first shock, the nurse—Jane, Karkat reads off her badge as she drops the blankets on the bedside table—doesn’t look intimidated at all.

“Nothing to be concerned about,” she says to Mr. Makara, and he sits back a little, looking vaguely disgruntled.  She smiles at him, and then goes to Gamzee and leans over him.  “Gamzee?”  She’s louder and less gentle than Karkat would have expected when she touches his shoulder, raising her voice—for the first time, Gamzee stirs and takes a shaky breath.  He’s still trembling.  “Honey, I’m going to put some more blankets on you, you’ll just be cold for a second.”

Gamzee mumbles and Jane chuckles that strange little _hoohoohoo_! chuckle again and unfolds one of the blankets off the pile. 

It is the weirdest thing to watch.  By the time she’s got two new warmed blankets over Gamzee and his shivering has eased, she’s talking to Mr. Makara like they’ve known each other forever.  There’s something infectious about her slightly bucktoothed smile.  Gamzee seems more awake when she’s there, everything seems weirdly brighter.

“Well I’m very sorry to hear that,” says Jane as the rough points of the story are explained to her—she finishes tucking in the last blanket and straightens up.  “Would you like a cup of coffee?  We have a gift shop across the hall, you all look half-dead.” 

The Makaras, as it turns out, both take their coffee very very strong and black.  Karkat tries to pour in his cream and sugar out of their line of sight, but he catches Kurloz raising his eyebrows at him with a little smirk on his tattooed lips so apparently it doesn’t work.  Karkat defiantly pours another cream into his coffee and flips him off, cheeks flaming, and Kurloz shrugs his skinny shoulders and leads the way back to Gamzee.

They’ve barely all settled down next to the bed again when there are footsteps outside—voices, quiet words—Karkat glances back and sees a flash of dark grey uniform, a badge glinting in the pale light. “…uh…” he starts, but then someone outside says “ _thank you for your cooperation_ ” and the curtain pulls back.

Mr. Makara jerks upright, and so fast he wouldn’t have caught it if he wasn’t looking for it, Karkat sees his hand go for a gun that isn’t there.  The officer ducks through the curtain and by the time she turns around Mr. Makara is standing straight again, face blank.  She’s short and curvy, dark-skinned, but with a heavy spattering of even darker freckles.  She’s got bright teal studs in her ears and red-tinted sunglasses even through the room is dark, and Karkat shifts a little bit, uncomfortable; the lenses are mirrored, it’s almost impossible to tell where she’s looking.  She flashes her badge—Mr. Makara thins his lips, eyes narrowing, but doesn’t say anything.

“Kurloz Makara?”

Kurloz and his dad both nod.  The police officer glances from one to the other, then down at Gamzee.  Her shoulders rise and fall. 

“…I’m Captain Pyrope,” she says, “—I’m sorry to hear about your break-in.”

…and Karkat knows where he recognizes her face from.  Terezi is lighter, taller, leaner, and always _always_ smiling, but there’s a similarity in the way they walk, the red glasses and doesn’t she usually have those earrings in?  Same color, right?  Karkat never really thought to look.

Mr. Makara looks mutinous.  He hasn't broken eye-contact since the officer came in, and although those mirrored glasses make it impossible to tell where she's looking, Karkat thinks maybe by the angle of her head that she's keeping an eye on him too.

“...I would like to talk to you outside,” says Terezi’s aunt, and glances at Karkat.  “…the family members for now, please.”

Kurloz stands up slowly and then glances at his dad.  Mr. Makara scowls, but then bows his head and reluctantly follows. The conversation moves away. 

Karkat is left in the dimness of the room, looking at Gamzee’s still face.  He glances over at the curtain as it flutters behind them, and then reaches out hesitantly.  Gamzee looks so cold and still but his hand is warm and twitches when Karkat’s fingers brush his battered, knobbly knuckles.  Karkat lifts it up, glances back at the others and then, almost guiltily, slides his hand under Gamzee’s and threads their fingers together. 

They sit there in silence for what feels like a long time in the quiet.  Karkat listens half-heartedly to the conversation happening outside—it sounds like it’s mostly Mr. Makara doing the talking, explaining what he saw, and then translating for Kurloz as he starts to tell his part of the story. 

It feels like hours later, but really it’s probably more like fifteen minutes when Gamzee finally stirs.  He makes a grumbling, complaining kind of noise and yawns.  Karkat jumps and starts to pull his hand away, but Gamzee’s hand twitches and holds on, squeezing his fingers. 

“… _hey…_ ”

Gamzee turns his head, blinking blearily.  His throat is bruised and his voice is ragged—the gown hangs off his bony shoulders and the wiry muscle strung over his bones and makes him look even skinnier than he did in his own clothes, which is a freaking miracle that that’s even possible.  He coughs a little, weakly, and Mr. Makara looks over from his conversation and immediately comes back through the half-open curtain at a half-run.  He bends down and traces his son's cheek with his fingertips like he's afraid he's going to break him, then with the calloused palm of his hand, stroking Gamzee’s hair back out of his face.  He rumbles something in Arabic.  Gamzee nods and starts to answer and then winces, one hand rising shakily to his throat, and signs instead, painfully slow and clumsy.  Mr. Makara watches and then shakes his head.  Gamzee slumps and takes a tiny, shaky breath.

“…wh…?” he starts, and then chokes again and turns his face to Karkat, bleary-eyed and shaky and--and  _smiles._

Karkat barely resists the urge to grab his best friend by the shoulders and shake him, the sudden rush of affection and relief is so strong.  He has to do— _something_ —something, there has to be something to let out the boil of heat in his chest.  He grabs Gamzee’s face and feels it change under his hands, sees Gamzee smile sleepily and jerks forward to awkwardly kiss his forehead.

“ _Karkat,_ ” says Gamzee groggily, and tries to reach up with one wavering hand.  The IV tubing snags on the railing of the bed, the monitors beep and complain and he lets it fall back and just leans his head against Karkat's cheek.  “—mnh— _hey…b’st friend…_ ”

“Don’t you _ever_ fucking do that again,” Karkat croaks, and kisses him again, beyond embarrassment, dizzy with relief.  “— _never_ again, fuck, you scared the shit out of us—”

Gamzee pats his hand vaguely.  There’s a clip on one finger, clunky and cold, his face is kind of gray, but he’s smiling and it’s brilliant.  It’s fucking _wonderful_. 

It’s stupid as fuck, but Karkat kisses his forehead again and Gamzee chokes out a little laugh and pats at him weakly and it’s great.  It’s _great._

“Gamzee!”

Kurloz’s voice is awful and hoarse, cracking-raw with emotion.  Gamzee looks up past Karkat and then Kurloz is there too, both of the Makaras crowding over the bed and doing the same thing Karkat did, trying to hold him without holding him.  Behind them, the police officer is watching, smiling a little.  Gamzee mumbles something—Mr. Makara shakes his head, and Gamzee smiles at him like fucking _sunshine_.  Karkat’s heart does something ridiculous. 

Kurloz backs away first, reluctantly, keeping his eyes on his brother until he has to turn away.  He turns back to Captain Pyrope, rifles in the pocket of his jeans, and holds up a phone.

“This is the evidence you—”

Kurloz nods before she can finish.  His face is gray and his lips are thinned, but he holds up the phone and presses a few buttons.  Gamzee’s phone, Karkat recognizes the case, hand-painted and ancient.  Kurloz holds up the phone and a crackly voice screeches out of it, warped by static like tearing cloth.  It’s far away and quiet, but Karkat recognizes the voice instantly.  As though in reaction to the sound of Cal’s voice, his aching diaphragm throbs a little.  He can almost feel Cal’s boot hitting him in the stomach, see how his fingers dug into Gamzee’s throat… “— _a knife in your brother’s eyes, I’m gonna—_!”  Kurloz fast-forwards—there are grunts and thuds, the sound of a fight in the background, but the words are even clearer than before, _“—drag you behind my truck by your ugly fucking hair until there’s no skin on your back ‘m gonna fuck your mouth till you choke to death on my—_ ”

Kurloz’s face twitches—for a second the cold, stony mask cracks, and his expression is an awful thing to see.  Gamzee’s face goes open and shocked and then stills.  Karkat’s sitting next to him, halfway onto the bed; Gamzee turns his face into Karkat’s side and takes a shaky little breath.  For a second Karkat hesitates, nervous, and then reaches out and slides an arm under his shoulders cautiously, and Gamzee sniffs and shifts a little, wincing, until his face is in Karkat’s shoulder, hiding like a scared kid.  The police officer’s face is very, very still. 

“…alright,” she says finally, evenly.  “Thank you.” 

Kurloz signs something—the officer cocks her head to one side.

“One moment, sir.”  She turns her head just slightly—Karkat, watching distantly, notices that she doesn’t take her eyes off Kurloz’s carefully-blank face or his twitching hands.  “Captor!”

Another officer comes jogging over from further down the hallway, almost tripping twice over his gawkishly long legs.  _M. Captor_ , his nametag says—he looks around at Karkat, Gamzee, Mr. Makara and Kurloz with wide, freakishly bright, mismatched eyes. 

“Wazzup?” he says, a little slurred.  The officer gives him a sharp look.  He coughs and straightens up.  “…sorry LT.  Sir.”

“Officer Captor knows sign language,” says the captain, and steps back, ushering Captor forward.  Kurloz looks Captor up and down, and cautious curiosity replaces some of his tense anger.  He flickers something out, and Gamzee, watching, mumbles almost automatically in Karkat’s ear, so quiet only he can hear it, _good meeting you, brother._   Captor grins with a mouth full of crooked teeth, and for all the slurring and lisping his hands move without hesitation, as fluent as Kurloz’s.  (“… _sorry about her,”_ Gamzee translates blearily, and Karkat watches Captor’s face as he signs, emoting without the words.  “ _She’s super radical when she’s not on duty.”_ )

“Super radical?” Karkat mumbles back, “—really?”

“For fuckin’ sure,” says Gamzee, and he sounds more awake than he has for a while, finally starting to surface from the haze he’s been in since he woke up.  

He watches Kurloz sign for a few more seconds—it gives him something to think about, Karkat thinks, and he’s glad for that.  It’s nice to have a translator too, goddamn.  (If he decides to sign up for ASL classes next year of high school, it will have nothing to fucking do with this family okay, not like anybody offers lessons in Arabic anyway—)  Kurloz tells the story, in tight, controlled movements, of coming back from a long talk with his father, hearing somebody screaming upstairs and running up the stairs to find his brother on the ground with a knife in his side.  (Gamzee’s hand eases over to the side of his chest as he says the words, and Karkat glances over at the heart monitor and sees his pulse speed up at the thought—seeing that is strangely intimate, weirdly personal, and it makes Karkat’s head hurt).

More signs—officer Captor nods, eyes flickering between Kurloz’s hands and face.

“ _…there’s—_ “Gamzee falters for a second, his bleary translation fading away.  Karkat can feel him tense up, then go loose again, too exhausted for fear.  His voice is a ragged sigh.  “… _there’s texts from_ him—” the word ‘him’ is a sharp, violent gesture, and Gamzee’s voice mirrors it without any apparent thought, putting a sting of heavy hatred in it.  “— _on there too.  Sick…sick shit._ ”

Kurloz glances over at them, but Gamzee has shut his eyes again and turned his face into Karkat’s shoulder, and he doesn’t see the way his brother’s tattooed lips tighten and his shoulders rise and fall in a sigh.  He turns back and shakes his head, and then scrubs a hand over his bleary eyes and looks up suddenly with a quirk of a tired smile.  His lips move—his voice is audible, but when Karkat strains to hear all he gets is incomprehensible syllables.

“ _Andik oyoon helween_ ,” Gamzee mumbles, and snorts.  His dad makes a noise Karkat can’t read; his eyes flick from his son to the police officer and back.  Captor blinks and smiles, as confused as Karkat—Kurloz flicks his fingers dismissively, and Karkat doesn’t need Gamzee’s translation to know he says “— _never mind._ ”

“ _You can speak?_ ”

Kurloz’s mouth twists up a little, grimacing.  He raises his hands—hesitates.  “… _I don’t like to._ ”  There’s a moment of “silence”—then Kurloz blinks and holds out the phone.

Captor tilts his head to one side just like officer Pyrope did, but all he signs is “… _okay.  Thanks for this._ ”

Kurloz nods.  There’s a few more words, but he’s shifted his weight, and his hands are mostly hidden behind his body. Captor snorts and claps him roughly on the shoulder—Kurloz bristles like a startled cat and then relaxes again, chewing absently at his lower lip with one sharp incisor, watching Captor turn and walk back to his commanding officer.  They talk—captain Pyrope glances back at the little group watching her from Gamzee’s bed and then nods.  Captor grins at them and waves, and Kurloz walks jerkily to the curtain and tugs it shut.  His dark cheeks are tinted very faintly pink.

As soon as the curtain is shut, Gamzee and Mr. Makara are laughing.  Gamzee’s laugh is a little wheezy, but the sound is so, so familiar.  Karkat starts to smile a little too—and then stops as Kurloz turns and gives them all a withering look.  It’s completely terrifying—or it would be, if his cheeks weren’t turning a sort of chocolate-raspberry with blushing.  “ _Really_ , child?” Mr. Makara says as soon as he’s done laughing—he sounds infinitely amused.  “ _You have beautiful eyes_?” He throws himself dramatically back in his chair like a fainting heroine of a romance novel and quavers something theatrically in Arabic—Kurloz flips him off.  He gives Karkat a really vicious look—Karkat shifts a little bit, but Gamzee is lying on one of his arms still and he doesn’t want to shake that heavy head off his shoulder.  Kurloz signs something, frowning forbiddingly.

“He says—” Gamzee starts, and his brother glowers at him.  Gamzee doesn’t seem to notice, even though Karkat is squeezing his shoulder urgently—he keeps translating. “—should get how he feels about fuckin’ dudes, which is how he basically ain’t interested— _ow!_ ” 

Kurloz lets go of his ear and huffs through his nose.  Signs some more.

“Yeah,” says Gamzee sulkily, “—but you still _kiss_ boys so I don’t see as how you’re all pissed at me.”

Kurloz’s eyes narrow.  He signs something very slow and deliberate—Gamzee’s eyes widen and his ears turn red as his eyes dart toward Karkat and then guiltily away again.  “—not the same thing at-fucking-all,” he mumbles.  “Ain’t like that.”

“No, it’s not,” Karkat says sharply, “—whatever the fuck you just said I am literally 900% positive it’s bullshit.”  Kurloz and Mr. Makara trade looks, raise their eyebrows at each other—look away and shrug. 

“Well goddamn,” says Mr. Makara easily, and takes a sip out of the mug he brought in—prison-jumpsuit orange, with chipped numbers on it.  Karkat squints at that, instead of looking at any of the Makaras gathered around him. Wow.  What an interesting goddamn mug.   _24601._   Why the fuck would you want a mug like that?  Let’s all look at it.  What a stupid fucking mug.  Stupid.  ( _stupid._ )  “Everybody’s kissin’ boys now like that shit’s in fashion.”

“I am not _kissing_ anybody!” Karkat’s voice cracks—god his face is burning.  “It’s _not like that_ , Jesus fuck!   Kissing—“  he glances at Gamzee at just the same moment Gamzee glances at him and both of them stare instantly in the opposite directions, red-cheeked.  “—the last thing on my mind,” Karkat finishes through gritted teeth.  “That’s just—fucking…gross.  That’s gross.”

“Uh-huh.”  Mr. Makara blinks slowly at him, blank-faced.  “You sayin’ my boy’s not your taste?  Not good enough for your stubby ass, Vantas?”

“I’m saying I don’t want to _fuck_ him!” Karkat’s voice does that thing he hates, the thing where it rises and cracks into an awful squawk—Gamzee has his face in his hands and his ears are ruddy red-brown from embarrassment and his dad is glaring and Kurloz has his arms crossed and his lips pursed and everything is fucking terrible. 

“ _Then what you doing with him all the time if you don’t even like him like that_?” Kurloz now, one of those sharp, hissing little murmurs.  Karkat rears back, affronted.

“Of course I _like_ him goddammit, I’ve known him my whole goddamn life—I fucking _love_ him!”

There’s a long, long silence as Karkat’s mouth falls slowly open and Gamzee slowly raises his head to stare at his best friend and Kurloz and Mr. Makara stare with identical blank faces.

And then Mr. Makara grins a wide, white grin and throws his head back and laughs.  “ _He loves him!”_ he chuckles, and booms out something in Arabic, laughing full and huge and filling the room.  “Hey Kurloz—” more incomprehensible laughter, and Kurloz’s mouth is twitching up at the corners, no matter how hard he tries to keep it down. 

“ _God,_ baba,” Gamzee groans, and covers his face with his hands.  “Ain’t a _joke_ , come on—‘s speakin’ from his heart and all—”

“And he does love you too, little Vantas,” Mr. Makara says, and Karkat sputters and Kurloz grins like a tiger, a slice of white, white teeth in his black-brown skin.  “Always sayin’ so.”

“He’s— _said_ so,” Karkat grits out.  “—he says—”

“Yeah what, once a week?”  Mr. Makara snorts.  “Not every fuckin’ day, _Karkat says,_   _Karkat was tellin’ me_ , _gotta get my love on of my best friend today—_ “

“Oh my fucking god.” Karkat turns and looks at Gamzee—Gamzee edges down in his bed, start to pull his blankets up to cover his red face—

“ _Ffffffuck_ ,” Gamzee grits out, and the flush drains sharply from his face, his hand goes to his bandaged side.  “ _Fuck,_ fuck fuck—” The laughter stops immediately.  All three of his visitors go sharply forward, hands out to—what?  Karkat doesn’t even know why he’s moving, just that that was a sudden, awful sound in the middle of all the laughter and Gamzee’s breathing hard through clenched teeth, eyes squeezed shut.

“Is everything alright?  Oh my goodness.”  The nurse, Jane, is back.  She takes in the scene for a second—Gamzee’s grimace, everybody else’s panicky expressions—and then comes forward, snatching gloves off the wall and pulling them as she comes, and peels the blankets back as Karkat scrambles out of her way.  Gamzee goes still, frozen, as her hands move lightly over the bandages. 

“Nothing unexpected,” she says soothingly a few moments later, and Mr. Makara takes a breath and mumbles something to Gamzee in Arabic, too soft to make out individual words.  His voice when he’s calming somebody down is really goddamn deep, just this great, soft rumble.  Karkat bites his lip and reaches out, and Gamzee’s hand squeezes his as soon as their fingers touch.  He’s shaking again.  “You’re still tender after the surgery, and we have some medications for that, we’ll have you right as rain in no time.  Can you describe your pain for me on a scale from one to ten?”

It is endlessly comforting, having her there looking at things and _tsk_ ing sympathetically.  She asks a few more questions, listens to his chest carefully, jots some things down and then pats Gamzee’s shoulder gently and straightens up.

“I’m going to go get something for your pain, dear,” she says, and for all she can’t be too much older than Karkat’s big brother Kankri, she sounds incredibly motherly.  “—you just lie back and try to take nice, slow breaths.  And try not to get too _excited_.”  That last is said just ever-so-slightly pointedly, and is more directed at Gamzee’s guests than Gamzee himself.  It’s not accusing, but all of them shrink just a little bit, even Mr. Makara looming in his too-small hospital chair.  Jane goes bustling off again.

Everything is a blur after that.  Gamzee wakes up more and more, and is caught up on what happened; Cal in police custody.  His trip to the operating room.  A slightly harried-looking man appears and explains about the tube emerging from under the clean white bandages on his side—words like _pneumothorax_ and _intubation_ seem to fly mostly over Gamzee’s head, and the concept that having air in your chest is a bad thing seems to confuse him, but another, more simplified explanation later he seems to get it.  He pokes at the tube cautiously as the man walks away and mumbles, “— _all up inside me and all, what the shit.  Motherfucking miraculous_.”  Karkat swats his hand away as gently as possible. 

Then they follow him up to another floor, an actual room. Karkat feels like a wrung-out rag, and by the looks of Gamzee he feels worse; his eyes keep wandering shut.  Karkat sits down next to the bed as Kurloz and his father go in and out and talk to people, threads his fingers through Gamzee’s and settles back, watching his face as it slowly…goes…

Karkat jolts awake and it’s dark.  There are lights.  Something beeping quietly.  His neck hurts like hell, his mouth tastes like socks and regret and god his head hurts so fucking bad what the fuck—?!

Then he starts to sit up and feels something pull at his hand, and he looks down and sees Gamzee and everything slots back into place.  Gamzee's still asleep, dreads in disarray and fucking ugly hospital gown halfway off one shoulder; he’s mumbling to himself as he dreams, face tense and eyes flickering under his eyelids.  Karkat squints up at the clock on the wall; it’s four in the morning.  Mr. Makara and Kurloz are nowhere to be seen, but there are two empty cups of coffee in the trash.  He's still so tired, but he yawns and shifts and starts to sit up anyway—maybe there’s somewhere to get a drink around here, go to the bathroom maybe—

He pulls his hand away and Gamzee snaps awake so sudden and sharp Karkat almost screams.  He jolts upright, gasping, slurring something in Arabic that melts into broken English—“— _baba_ —d’n wanna die I don’t—” he thrashes, the clip on his finger snaps off, the machine gives a sharp, urgent beep and then blinks insistently.  Gamzee doesn’t seem to notice, he just gropes at his side, presses his hands over the dressing there and gasps for air.  His gasping catches in his dry throat—he coughs, whimpers in pain and then coughs again, rough and hoarse, on and on and on.  “— _laa,_ _ma talmisni—_ nnh—!”

Karkat jerks forward and grabs one arm—Gamzee gasps and seems to wake up, but only a little.  He’s still panicking, he can’t breathe right and every time he coughs or draws a breath his face twists up in pain.  His eyes find Karkat’s face and stick there, wide and scared. 

“ _Karkat,_ ” he chokes out, still half sleep-talking, and his free hand claws at his side.  “—m I gonna die, am—where’s _baba_ —”

“ _Shhh.”_ Karkat pulls his hands gently away from the bandages, grabs one of his hands and squeezes it hard.  “Shhh, calm down, did you even listen to the nurse goddammit—Gamzee.  _Gamzee._   Stop coughing, just try to stop coughing.  Come on, shhhh...”  He gropes around with his other hand—finds the call light and punches the button.  Gamzee groans and stifles the next cough, but when he lets a breath out it sounds like a sob.  Karkat leans in, trying not to pull any more tubes out, as gentle as he can be through his sleepy panic, and wraps his arms around his best friend’s skinny shoulders, rocking a little.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Gamzee croaks in his ear, sharp and tiny like he’s not even aware he’s talking, “ _—fuck fuck fuck I’m gonna—ow—_ fuck, _ow—fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck—”_

There’s a big mug of water on the table—Karkat leans over and snatches it, and it’s a good thing it has a lid on it because his hand is shaking so badly he would have slopped it all over both of them if it didn’t.  Somebody comes through the open door and Karkat looks up, panicking, and sees a young man in chocolate-brown scrubs, looking tired and concerned. 

“He had a nightmare,” he says, and Gamzee scrabbles for the water in his hands and fumbles the straw into his mouth, sucking down water.  The coughing shaking through him fades a little.  He’s still breathing too fast and too shallow, wincing with every breath.  The nurse shakes his head like he’s waking himself and Karkat feels his cheeks redden but keeps his arm around Gamzee, his hand supporting Gamzee’s on the water as the nurse grabs gloves off the wall and comes forward.  There are red streaks in his hair.  Karkat focuses on those and squeezes Gamzee’s shoulder.  God but he’s still so tired.

“ _Where’s baba,_ ” is the first thing out of Gamzee’s mouth when he’s done drinking—Karkat opens his mouth and then closes it again and looks up at the nurse helplessly. 

“If you mean your dad…?”  Gamzee nods.  “—and if your dad is the man with the…well, with the dreadlocks, the really very big, tall man with the tattoos—”  Gamzee nods again, more emphatically.  “—then he’s down in the family and visitors lounge.  Um…he said that you should stay here,” he nods to Karkat, hands busy and eyes watching monitors and scanning dressings.  “…and that he and…your brother?”  This to Gamzee, who nods some more, and takes another gulp of water.  “…he said they would go sleep down there.  That it didn’t make any sense to all crowd in here, um…and that you were the best at calming him down, so it should be you.”

“…’s true, that,” Gamzee mumbles, and Karkat’s face goes, if possible, even redder as Gamzee gives him a weak grin.  “Got a mighty motherfuckin’ talent in you for that, best friend.”

“Which is weird, because most people I just _piss off,_ ” says Karkat, a little roughly, and Gamzee laughs, small and choked.  “…it hurts.  Your side, I mean.”

Gamzee’s smile falters.  “—well,” he says.  “I mean…a motherfucker wouldn’t wanna—not so fuckin’ early and all—”

“I am here to do this kind of thing,” says the nurse firmly, and ruffles up his own red-streaked hair, obviously thinking.  “…it doesn’t matter how early it is, really, uh…I think you have toradol if your pain is getting bad, you’re allowed to have it now.” 

Gamzee looks slightly overwhelmed by all this choice-making so soon after nightmares and pain and waking up at approximately ass in the morning.  He looks at Karkat.  Karkat blinks back. 

“It’s up to you, dude,” he says, “—I don’t know how bad it is.  But if it hurts and you can get pills for it why the fuck would you not?”

“Increased pain, uh…is bad for healing,” puts in the nurse, and picks up a clipboard.  There’s a pokeball sticker on the back of it.  Karkat resists the urge to snort, but barely.  “Can you rank your pain…?”

From there, it’s a familiar sequence of questions.  Gamzee doesn’t seem in the mood to talk as the nurse sorts out the meds, especially not about whatever he was dreaming about—Karkat doesn’t push it.  More listening to Gamzee’s chest—taking temperatures and blood pressures and re-clipping the thing that came off Gamzee’s finger when he woke up.  Pills. 

Karkat should stay up until he knows Gamzee’s asleep, he really should.  But when everything is done and the nurse nudges the call light into Gamzee’s hand and leaves the room, the exhaustion drops back onto both of them like heavy velvet.  He scoots his chair closer, drops his head onto Gamzee’s bony shoulder, and feels Gamzee reach out tentatively and take his hand again as he drifts back off into slow, confused dreams full of flickering lights and strange, far-away noises, holding a hand he can’t quite see.


	6. Chapter 6

Karkat is awakened again once or twice—early-morning shit, blood-draws that make Gamzee wince and avoid looking at the sight of his own blood, a couple of pills—but never for long, and never all the way.  The first time he really wakes up it’s with the first glints of morning sunlight streaming down on him through the window, and it’s because there was a loud _SMACK_ that slammed through his dreams like a gunshot.  He sits upright, spitting out a series of noises that aren’t really formed enough to be curses, to the sight of Gamzee’s dad with that same orange 24601 mug full of coffee and a grim smile on his face.  Karkat looks at him, looks at where his hand is, and puts it together—the newspaper on the table. He threw it down.  Okay.  Loud.  What the fuck.

“…not on the front _,_ ” says Mr. Makara, “—but it’s there.  Fuckers move fast.”

Gamzee still looks groggy and confused—he never did wake up in a hurry—so Karkat picks up the newspaper while Mr. Makara goes over to his son and lowers his voice a little, more comforting than triumphant.  Karkat scans the front page, then remembers, _“not on the front_ ” and starts flipping through the paper, looking for whatever it is that makes this worth reading.

He finds it just a few pages in. 

“Local sports star arrested,” he reads, and wrinkles up his nose.  “Sports star’?  What the fuck, how can you be a ‘sports star’ when our team never even wins any games?”

Mr. Makara makes a little “get on with it” gesture.  He’s settled on the edge of Gamzee’s bed—he looks too big for it, like he looks too big for everything—with his son propped up on one arm against his side.  The fingertips of one big hand rub slow circles on Gamzee’s back, and Gamzee looks sleepy and content and also like maybe he’s going to cry again.  Karkat looks away, cheeks hot.

“…Caliborn English (21)…uh, load of bullshit about how he’s some kind of famous big-shot around school, which is a load of bull-fuckery—” another look from Mr. Makara.  Karkat clears his throat.  “…’arrested after breaking into the home of…okay, so basically…they don’t know much yet but it’s right there in the news Cal broke in and tried to hurt you, and they’re doing a lot of drug-tests and looking into…sexual assault and harassment charges, all that shit.  Now they’ve got your phone, he’s totally _boned._ ”

Gamzee blinks hazily and then smiles like he’s not sure whether he’s supposed to be or not.  Karkat takes pity on him and quirks up one corner of his mouth, and Gamzee smiles back sleepily. 

“They said the pain medicine would make him woozy,” Karkat says, when Mr. Makara looks down at Gamzee with a look on his face almost like concern.  “He’ll get excited later probably.  And cry, probably.” 

“…Kurloz?”  Gamzee asks vaguely.

“School,” says Mr. Makara.  “Didn’t wanna go, but he did make promises.”  He doesn’t say to who, but there’s only so many people he could be talking about.  Karkat looks down at the paper instead of at the way Gamzee’s eyes go sad and quiet again, but looking down just drags his eyes to Mr. Makara’s hands and the way he’s twisting the gold band on his ring finger around and around.

“…I gotta go too,” says Gamzee, and to Karkat’s complete horror he starts shifting around, like he’s about to try throwing off the covers and swinging his legs over the side.  “—promised.”

“ _No_ ,” Mr. Makara says firmly, and Gamzee makes a wordless, complaining noise as his father’s hands gently take his skinny shoulders ( _so small so small he’s so small and his dad’s hands are so big_ ) and push him back down. “You got pills and sewing and holes in places not right for them.  You stay right where you’re put, _umri._ ”

“But…” Gamzee can’t seem to remember what he was going to say to argue.  He opens and shuts his mouth a few times, then slumps back and sniffs.  “…fuck.”

Mr. Makara murmurs something—Gamzee scrubs at his eyes awkwardly and nods. 

“…you though,” Mr. Makara starts, and Karkat realizes a second late that this is addressed at him.  “—you—”

“No.”

Mr. Makara frowns.

“ _No,_ ” Karkat repeats, more forcefully.  “I’m not going anywhere.  Not until somebody comes in here and tells me to my face he’s going to be okay.”  Gamzee pats absently out toward him—Karkat reaches out and snatches up his hand, way too fast, way too eager.  It doesn’t fucking matter.  He’s alive.  Mr. Makara raises his eyebrows and mutters something to himself in Arabic, but doesn’t push the issue.  His eyes linger on Karkat and Gamzee’s hands, knotted up on Gamzee’s blankets—if he has an opinion, he doesn’t comment.

“So…” Gamzee is looking at the paper now—his hand squeezes on Karkat’s when he sees Cal’s picture, small and cramped in the corner of the article, but he’s too groggy to do more than shiver a little and shake it off.  “…so, he’s…in trouble?”

“All the motherfucking trouble we can throw at him,” Mr. Makara rumbles, satisfied.

“You’re not?”

“Why’d we be?”

Gamzee shrugs, crooked and tiny.  “… _Cal said…_ ”

“We talked about this,” Karkat says, and squeezes Gamzee’s hand until he looks up.  “Forget whatever he told you, okay?  All of it.  He’s full of shit.  Soon everybody else is going to know that too.”

“Hey, this motherfucker is _clean_ ,” Mr. Makara says, with what sounds like wounded pride.  “Look at me all motherfucking settled up with the law, can look a motherfucking police in the eye and everything.”

“Officer,” says Karkat. 

Mr. Makara squints at him.  “What?”

“It…it’s…’the police’ or ‘a police…officer’.”  Karkat slumps a little bit in the face of Mr. Makara’s blank stare.  “…never mind.”

Mr. Makara says something pointed and clear in Arabic, never breaking eye contact with Karkat—Gamzee makes a conflicted sort of noise like he can’t decide whether to laugh or sigh, and answers in kind.  Mr. Makara laughs.  Karkat seethes.

“—that’s ‘cause you’re bein’ a shit, baba,” says Gamzee.  His dad says something that Karkat doesn’t understand, but with the little nod in Karkat’s direction it’s pretty clearly along the lines of _well he started it_.  Gamzee grins, and his eyes crinkle almost shut.  It’s so familiar, and Karkat realizes suddenly how _long_ it’s been since he saw Gamzee smile like that.  He’s been smiling, but that childlike care-free grin faded away months ago.

The pain hits all over again.  Karkat leans into Gamzee’s shoulder and feels him shift a little to make room, and every movement is another little proof that he’s okay.  Or if not that, that he’s alive.  If he’s not okay now, he has the chance to live and someday he will be.  Fuck, that was too close.  That was _way_ too close.

Mr. Makara excuses himself again a few minutes later when the nurse comes in—the hospital room is small enough with just Karkat and Gamzee in it, but adding in the mass of long legs and broad shoulders that is Gamzee’s dad makes it almost impossible to get around without tripping over somebody.  The nurse smiles at him a little nervously as they pass each other in the doorway, and Mr. Makara gives him that slightly terrifying, white-toothed grin he shares with his elder son before vanishing out the door and into the dark hallway. 

“This is the last time you’ll see me—um, at least for now,” the nurse tells them as he wrestles with a tangled blood pressure cuff, and Gamzee’s face falls with almost comical sadness.  “I’ll be back tonight though, to check on you and make sure you’re okay still.  Feferi is gonna take good care of you until I get back.  She’ll be in in just a second, probably.  I told her she might see your dad and your brother, and…” he nods to Karkat a little awkwardly, and the question hangs in the air.  _What about you?  What are you_? 

Karkat opens his mouth—

“He’s my best friend,” says Gamzee earnestly, and his hand holds Karkat’s tight.  Somehow their fingers threaded together, and Gamzee’s palm is dry and soft and warm.  “So—so that’s okay, right?”

Karkat doesn’t hear the response.  He’s too busy staring down at their hands.  His skin is a little lighter than Gamzee’s, a different shade of brown, and the contrast of their skin is suddenly, intensely fascinating.  It is absolutely not because he doesn’t want to look the nurse in the eyes.  Definitely not. 

_And he does love you too, little Vantas, always sayin’ so…_

“…hey,” Karkat says, and when he looks up Gamzee is turning to look at him; his smile is fading and softening, lingering in his eyes, questioning and expectant.  “Gamzee…is—”

There’s a sharp rap at the door.  Karkat jerks upright—Gamzee flinches in shock, and the moment of…whatever that was…vanishes abruptly as a woman in brilliantly-pink scrubs comes striding in

“Hi!” the new nurse chirps.  “Rufioh said you were wonderful all night, I can’t wait to get to know you today!  I’m Feferi!  I have your 8 AM pills for you, can you describe your pain for me?”

More questions, more poking around, more pills— _can you take a deep breath for me_ and _have you gone to the bathroom since the surgery_ and _what would you like for breakfast this morning_ —Karkat sits there next to Gamzee the entire time and if his vice-like grip on Gamzee’s hand is annoying, Gamzee doesn’t mention it or try to shake him off.  If anything, when the nurse goes to look at his side he squeezes harder.

It’s less gory than Karkat’s imagination tried to make him believe it would be.  There’s stitches where the knife went in, and swelling, kind of red and sore-looking, but (of course, stupid) there’s no blood.  It’s just…a tube.  Going into his best friend’s chest.  Perfectly normal.  Oh god.

“… _Karkat?_ ”

Karkat jumps and looks up and Gamzee’s watching him.  He looks pale and sweaty and in pain, but mostly he just looks…worried.

“…you—okay?”

 _Oh god_ , Karkat has the spare brain cells to think to himself, around the hum of horror.  _You’re the worst.  You are the absolute fucking_ worst.

“—‘m _fine,_ ” he gets out, and leans in as close as he can with the nurse still close and looking at the tube.  Gamzee goes really still when Karkat’s forehead presses against his shoulder—Karkat barely feels it.  He didn’t realize he was shaking.  “… _you could have fucking_ died. _”_

“Awww, _sweetie!_ ”  The nurse pats Karkat’s shoulders—Karkat lurches forward with the enthusiastic strength of the blow.  “He’ll be fine!”  To Gamzee, almost _intolerably_ cheerfully, “—you seem like a really positive person, and that’s half the bait-le!”

“The…?” Gamzee sounds dazed.

“Oops!” The nurse giggles.  “I let one slip by accident—I keep fish at home and I love them so much!! Sometimes I have to slip in a pun or two, sea?”

“ _First the pokemon nerd and now this,_ ” Karkat mumbles into Gamzee’s shoulder—Gamzee reaches awkwardly across at an angle to pat at the side of Karkat’s face, but Karkat can feel the tremor of a muffled laugh run through him. 

“I like puns,” he says, sleepy and happy.  “Jokes are the _shit._ ”

“Ooooo, we are gonna get along so _well_!”  The nurse straightens up and pulls a pen out of her bun to jot something down, then smiles at both of them.  “You’ll be seeing me around, okay guppies?  If you need me you know how to get me!”

She bounces out of the room.  Gamzee smiles blankly after her, then slumps back on his pillows and sighs.

“…’kay, best friend,” he says, after a long, sleepy silence.  “…time to go.”

Oh.

“…oh,” says Karkat, and tries not to let the hurt and embarrassment show in his voice.  “—yeah.  Fuck, right, I’ll get out of your way—”

“What?”  Gamzee frowns.  “No—brother, listen.  ‘s great as fuck and all to have you hanging out with a motherfucker and getting your chill on, but you told baba you’d not get back to school till you heard I’m…y’know, I’ll be okay and all.  And fuck if she didn’t just say so, right out loud at you.”

Karkat blinks.  Gamzee had looked so sleepy when he said that, he hardly expected him to hear the words, let alone think about them and remember them.  But Gamzee just stares up at him, face earnest, and _god_ what is he supposed to do about this idiot?  What the fuck is he supposed to do.

“…okay,” says Karkat, and pulls out his phone.  “Okay.  I’ll tell dad I need a ride to school.  I’ll get you your homework too, if you fall behind you’re never gonna get yourself back ahead.  Dumbass.”

“Sure, best friend.”

“Call me if you need me.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re gonna be fine.  You know that, right?”

“Figure I do.”

“Tell them if you need pain medicine.  _Before_ it starts getting bad.”

“Brother, you gonna talk all through first period?”

“Fuck!  Okay okay, I’m going—text me or something if—”

“Karkat, _get your move on_!”

He’s laughing when Karkat steps out of the room, and the sound follows him down the hallway and into the bright, cool morning.

\--

The school rumor mill closes on Karkat like a school of piranhas as soon as he walks into homeroom, forty minutes late and out of breath.  Apparently a couple of people heard from some other people that something had happened at Gamzee’s house, and that somebody was DEAD and that it might be Cal or he might have killed somebody???! KARKAT!  Is Gamzee okay??  You have to tell me efurrything!

“No I don’t,” Karkat hisses out of the corner of his mouth, and ducks his head as Mr. Scratch glances their way.  “ _Shut up Nepeta you’re gonna get both of us detention._ ”

“ _Nobody’s going to give you detention!”_ Nepeta hisses back, and flattens herself across her desk to get a look at Karkat’s face.  “Karkat, _your boyfriend is in the hospital!  You can get away with anything!”_

 _“What?_ ”  Karkat shoots her a glare—as ever, it bounces off Nepeta’s perpetual slightly sly cheeriness without a metaphorical scratch.  “ _Do you even realize what kind of asshole you sound like right now?  No, I’m not going to use Gamzee’s stay in the hospital to get out of trouble and—_ ”  and then his brain rewinds a second and his face flushes hot all the way to the roots of his hair.  “—and he is _not_ my _boyfriend_!”

“I beg your pardon?”

Karkat shuts his mouth abruptly, but it’s too late; Mr. Scratch’s pale eyes are fixed on him, his mouth curved in an unnerving smile. 

“Nothing,” Karkat mumbles, and then, grudgingly, “…sir.”

“Oh, I’m sure if Ms. _Leijon_ is interested enough in your love life to gossip about it in class, it’s exciting enough to share with your peers.”  Scratch smiles.  He never quite seems to stop, but there’s something aggressive about the expression

“I was just teasing him, sir!”  Nepeta says, and Scratch’s eyes snap to her.  “It wasn’t his fault!”

“I don’t have a love life,” Karkat says firmly.  “My friend is in the hospital.  That’s all.”  The effort of trimming the profanity out of every sentence when he talks to Mr. Scratch makes him more than a little bit monosyllabic, which is probably good because Mr. Scratch is a bastard who’ll give you detention and dock points on your next quiz for “getting ahead of yourself”, which is to say any minute action he considers even a little bit disrespectful.

“My condolences,” says Scratch, with no sincerity whatsoever.  “And what answers did you find for our homework questions?””

Fuck.

“…I didn’t,” says Karkat, very curtly.  “I was kind of _distracted_.”

Mr. Scratch clicks his tongue and shakes his pale head slowly.  The shiny cue-ball baldness of his head is mesmerizing.  Karkat clenches his hands in the pocket of his hoodie.  _One.  Two._   He can’t punch a teacher in the face, that would be fucking idiotic.  _Three, four._   If he gets detention either dad or mom has to miss an hour of work to pick him up late.  _Five, six._  

Gamzee’s face if he heard Karkat punched a teacher flashes through Karkat’s mind.  He winces a little.

Scratch has been talking.  Karkat blinks and resurfaces, shoving the anger back down as deep as he can, which isn’t very deep. 

“—in my classroom in future.”

“Yessir,” says Karkat, and it doesn’t come out sounding exactly _sincere_ but it seems to at least pass muster.  Scratch smirks down at him and moves on, pulling a perfectly-folded sheet of paper out of his pocket with a flourish to start roll call.

By the end of eighth period, Karkat is exhausted.  Even standing on the sidewalk outside the school with his headphones on and his darkest scowl plastered across his face, people still stop and glance at him and whisper.  It’s not exactly a big town.  Word is spreading.  When he had to tell Scratch Gamzee was in the hospital, he just fanned the flames.

For once, it’s actually a relief to see his mom’s battered, tiny car weaving through the other parents picking their kids up at the curb, and Karkat shoves forward past a gaggle of skinny kids in tripp pants and jams himself inside, pulling his backpack onto his knees.

“Hi, dad.”

“Hey, kid.”  Karkat’s dad pulls away again, cruising out into the parking lot.  “…guess word got around, huh?”

Karkat lets out a long, long exhale that does absolutely nothing to relieve his frustration.  “Nepeta almost got me a detention poking her fucking nose in.”

Mr. Vantas laughs.  “It runs in the family.  Your mom was asking me questions all morning.  Apart from the interrogation, how was school?”

He listens patiently to Karkat as he unloads the anger he couldn’t let out to Scratch’s face, which takes him most of the drive home.  It isn’t until they’re unbending themselves from the tiny car and heading for the garage door that Mr. Vantas says, offhand, “—by the way, Kurloz called.”

It hasn’t stopped being weird that he calls Mr. Makara by first name.  Karkat stops dead in his tracks for a second, then shakes himself and half-runs to catch up.  “What?!  When?!”

“When you were at school.”  His dad reaches out to snag his wife as she goes past with her giant bag on one arm and a cup of tea in the other hand, looking distracted.  “—have a good day, beloved.” 

Karkat rolls his eyes as they kiss for a minute or two, and then his dad drops the car keys in her hand and she’s out the door.  Mr. Vantas sighs.

“…what was I talking about?”

“Gamzee’s dad.”

Mr. Vantas starts to open his mouth, then stops and squints at Karkat.  “…about his…phone call,” he says.  “Yes.  He knows about ten medical words and Kurloz is at school so he can’t translate, but he says it sounds like Gamzee’s healing pretty well.”

“Good thing you’re _buddies,_ ” Karkat says, a little bit acidly.  “When exactly the fuck were you gonna tell me about that, by the way?”

His dad pauses, looking somewhere distant for a second, blank-faced. 

“…whenever it came up,” he says quietly. 

“I talk about Gamzee all the time!  You must’ve known whose son he was—dad! _How do you know each other?_   You can’t just— _not_ tell me now!”

“Fine, fine!”  Mr. Vantas settles down in his chair by the living-room window—Karkat drops onto the couch and crosses his arms, fixing him with the most intense glare he can muster up.  His dad has been dealing with his temper for a long time, it takes the really dark glowers to even get through to him at this point.  “You need to keep all of this quiet though, Karkat.  He wouldn’t take it well if he knew I told you.  Cagey fucker.”

He takes a deep breath and sits back—Karkat sits forward.  For once, it’s good to see his dad using his therapist-sit.  It means he’s getting ready to talk, and Karkat is more than ready to hear him talk.

“…I met him…a long time ago,” Mr. Vantas starts, and rubs one temple distractedly.  “…fifteen.  Eighteen?  Years ago?”

“It doesn’t _matter,_ just fucking tell the story!”

“Watch your fucking mouth you little shit.”

Karkat doesn’t have time for jokes.  He is a man on a mission right now.  (Not a boy, thank you very much, a _man_.)  “Dad, hurry _up_!”

“Okay, okay.”  Mr. Vantas holds his hands up in surrender and settles back into his chair again.  “…I was his therapist, actually.”

The idea of huge, impassive Mr. Makara opening up to somebody at all, even to somebody as good at prying things out of people as Karkat’s dad is, is weird and kind of frightening, in a strange kind of way.  Karkat tries to picture it in his head; His dad would look kind of like him, when he was younger—taller, a little bit skinnier, maybe with one of those awful bright red sweaters weird slicked-down hair he seems to have in all of the family’s old pictures.  Mr. Makara…would probably look more like Kurloz.  Lighter-skinned and broader-shouldered, but tall and scary and about as talkative as a cliff face.  The image of them sitting in a room together, talking, is kind of ludicrous.

“He wasn’t much older than you,” Mr. Vantas continues, quiet and distant.  “—and he was…a mess.  He’d had a hard life already, and moving to a new country didn’t help.  He’d gotten in a lot of trouble, but he was still technically a minor and they did’t want to put him in prison yet, so I…said I’d try to help.  He frowns.  “…He barely even spoke English, he didn’t know what was going on, he was angry and upset and nobody could understand what he was saying.  I spoke a little bit of very basic travel Arabic, but I think it was a relief for him to be able to talk to somebody.  Otherwise he might have kept ignoring me.  Like he did for the first four sessions.

“…anyway.  He straightened up a little bit after I started working with him, enough to mostly get off the radar, but I couldn’t…”

Mr. Vantas pauses, frowning deeply, and then starts again. 

“…He didn’t hurt people, ‘out of respect’ for my help, but he was still pretty far from an upstanding citizen, if you get my drift.  Petty theft, battery…carjacking, once.  And then he’d come to my office and talk and he’d teach me Arabic and draw for me.”  Mr. Vantas sighs.  “…he’s a very complicated man.  I still don’t know what’s going on in his head most of the time.”

“Yeah, you and everybody else ever.”  Karkat grumbles, and they both roll their eyes, sharing the exasperation.  Vantases have never had patience for hiding houghts or emotions.  Pretty pointless, is the general family opinion.

“Anyway.” 

“Yeah.  So?”

“So…I knew him, and I also knew his…parole officer.  I suggested she should be put on his case, because she had a real talent for getting in your head.  Always worked well with the kids who didn’t want to talk.  But there was a, um…” he clears his throat—reaches down under the end table next to him, hunting around for something instead of meeting Karkat’s increasingly wide-eyed stare.  “…a scandal.  She had to leave the force, I told her she should think it through but…they were back together again as soon as he finished parole.  Then, well…Kurloz was born.”

“ _What?_ ”  Mr. Vantas doesn’t look up—he reaches way back to the back of the pile of old books and magazines under the end table, and pulls out a thick, dusty album Karkat has never bothered to do more than glance at when he’s forced to help clean.  “Dad!”

“ _Kurloz fell in love with his parole officer_ ,” Mr. Vantas repeats, and sighs.  “…she already had a baby, less than a year old—Terezi.  Kurloz took care of her and then of her and Kurloz Jr. when he was born—and then all three, while she worked.  I have no fucking idea how he did it.

“And then there was a—a shooting.”

Karkat swallows.  His dad’s eyes are far away, remembering something from years ago.

“Some kind of gang business from when Kurloz first came to this country, before he met me before he started cleaning himself up—things he thought he put behind him.  He…put somebody in a coma.  The man died.  A rich man, a…powerful man, important to the worst kind of people.  Kurloz spent a couple of nights locked up waiting for a trial and a couple of the man’s thugs found him while he was in there.  He still won’t talk about it, but he…” Mr. Vantas swallows convulsively.  “…he wasn’t…missing that finger.  When they took him in there.  He didn’t have half the scars he has now—that one on his face was still stitched up when I saw him after he was released.”

There’s silence for a few seconds.  Mr. Vantas looks pale and tired.  Karkat feels kind of sick. 

“…he thought he was done with them after he got out that time—got a parole officer, started seeing me for his…anger issues…but they weren’t done.  It was a drive-by shooting.  They’d just got that house, Kurloz was painting—in the back, thank god he had the kids with him, but Latula never even made it to the hospital.”

He finally seems to find the page he’s looking for; he holds out the open photo album to Karkat. 

Mr. Makara looks startlingly like Kurloz, but his smile when he was young is painfully identical to Gamzee’s, wide and white and dimpling his dark cheeks.  He looks about as freakishly tall as he is in the present, but there’s a skinny, disproportionate gawkiness to his frame that makes him look half-finished, decades younger.  In the photo, he’s standing tall in a crowded room that might be a bar.  He’s flexing both arms; a young man with a face that’s embarrassingly similar to Karkat’s and a slight, curvy woman in a white button-up hang off of one arm each as he lifts them, all three caught in mid-laugh on the dusty page. 

They look so young. 

There are only two other photos on the page.  In one, Mr. Makara looks older—broader, less skinny and more lean.  He’s asleep on a couch, with the woman lying pressed against his side and the couch back.  There’s a toddler on his chest, cuddled under the woman’s arm, with a thick head of wild, jet black hair.  The third one is a baby, held out to the camera in a pair of dark, battered hands—Gamzee had, if possible, even more hair than his brother, and big, wide, slightly startled eyes.  Like he just saw something amazing and new.

“There’s still an officer Pyrope on the force,” Mr. Vantas says, and traces a finger over the photo of the three of them, young and laughing.  “—Terezi’s aunt.”  He half-smiles, a little pained.  “…Gamzee and Kurloz’s aunt.  I’m surprised they put her on this case, with the name Makara involved, but then again I wouldn’t be surprised if she fought to be put on it.  Stubborn family.”

Karkat, who has seen his dad stand on a street corner in the pouring rain for hours yelling about good will and kindness over the sound of hundreds of traffic-jammed and angry people, doesn’t comment on that. “Why did he apologize?” he asks instead, kind of hypnotized—this is more information than any adult has ever actually volunteered upon questioning, it can’t possibly last. 

“You’ve been friends with Gamzee for…probably much longer than you remember.  When you two started playing together again, I sent Kurloz a letter.  I told him he had to promise me that my son would be safe.  He sent me back a piece of paper that just said _I swear._   Pretty sure he wrote it in his own blood, if you’ll believe that.”  He sighs.  “…I did.  I still do.”

“We would’ve been totally fucked if he hadn’t showed up to help.”  Karkat shudders just a little at the memory of Cal’s leering face, his sharpened teeth in the light from Gamzee’s phone.  The texts Cal sent while Gamzee was locked away and Karkat was too stupid to go get him.  But nothing was big enough to take down Mr. Makara.  Even Cal knew better than to try to hurt Gamzee while he was standing guard.  He’s…not as bad as I thought he was.”

“He’s not _bad_ ,” Mr. Vantas says sternly, “—he’s just from a different kind of lifestyle.  I know it seems like—”

“ _Dad._ ”

Mr. Vantas blinks, then sits back in his chair.  “…I wasn’t going to monologue,” he says, with injured innocence.

“Yeah you were.”

“Yeah, I probably was.”  Mr. Vantas shrugs.  “What can I say.”

“Nothing,” Karkat says, and stands up.  He still feels like he’s been beaten all over, but knowing seems to have lifted a weight off of him and in the dizzy relief he’s suddenly exhausted. “How about you just say nothing.  If you’re even fucking capable of that.”

“Oh, go to your room.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Take a nap.”

“Sure.”

“I love you!”

Karkat rolls his eyes and turns away, and…hesitates.

“…loveyoutoo,” he spits out, all in one breath, and then takes off for the stairs as fast as his tired legs will carry him so nobody can see his face burn.


End file.
